Prenderghast Puzzle: Filling in the Holes
by Emori Loul
Summary: With Coraline investigating a runaway case in England, Norman investigating his own family, and Salma investigating Coraline, things never looked so disjointed. But threads that seem disconnected may not be so when inspected more thoroughly. It's finding enough threads to inspect that's hard. Act 3 of Prenderghast Puzzle - not that order actually matters.
1. Prologue

Welcome to Act 3 of _Prenderghast Puzzle_—which, strangely enough, is being uploaded before Act 2! While the Acts all share a crossover world, this one is where all the hints from the other Acts bear fruit, and the characters from different stories really take effect. Along with the characters from ParaNorman, individuals and aspects from both the book and movie versions of _Coraline_ will feature heavily in this act (Coraline's personality, in particular, is a combination of her movie and book persona). There are also a bunch of Easter egg references to other series if you can find them—one in particular, a favorite series of mine, will be reoccurring in the background quite a lot (though it's not necessary to have knowledge of it to enjoy the story). In fact, there's already enough information in this prologue to name the series.

An early warning: this story will be jumping between people and times almost every chapter. The chapters will be categorized by who the chapter is about, so readers can either choose to read in a linear fashion and follow one person's story at a time, or read the chapters as they are presented and solve the non-chronologic mystery piece-wise (once again, "puzzle.")

* * *

Prenderghast Puzzle, Act 3: Filling in the Holes

By Emori Loul

There is a house down on Court Street. It has been there since the middle of the second World War. Up until a year ago, adolescents went there to smoke, paint graffiti, and do other less-than-reputable activities.

The address of this house is peculiar. It doesn't have a number. It doesn't need one.

There is only one house down on Court Street.

If you were to ask around, the adults would supplement any questions with the following story: a rich old widowed woman, wishing to help her daughter escape the horrors of the war in Europe, bought the land in the Fall of 1942, and a house was completed the following Spring. For some reason or another, however, the daughter never moved in, and the deed instead went to another family who lived there until the mid-eighties, and then the house was left abandoned.

If the adults in question were in the spirit of tourism, they may have also told you that the reason for this abandonment was because of a curse of vague specification and origin. It really depends on who you asked.

But ask the children and the teens—it is they who know the house best.

The house has been part of childhood lore in its neighborhood for other reasons than just less-than-reputable activities. The local tourist industry calls it the Witch's Keep to keep with the theme of the town—but every child in the neighborhood knows it as Creeper Castle.

If, instead of an adult, you were to ask an adolescent about the house, you may be lucky enough to watch said adolescent pale and show genuine discomfort that briefly overrides a cool facade. Their voice may grow softer, their body language more subdued, and you may be lucky enough to hear one of the very few true legends about the town—one of the ones the adults like to pretend _don't_ exist.

At first the story seems random. Out of place. This is a town known for witch trials; it is not a town of modern tragedies. The idea of such horrors inhabiting a relatively young house is ridiculous. The idea of any family allowing this is equally so.

But there is a reason why—despite being empty of people, having no security system and being filled with expensive antiques—the house has never been robbed.

If you manage to corner this adolescent, and get lucky—if he or she is one of _those_ adolescents, one of the rare ones that actually know more about the house than just what local legend claims dwells inside—then you may hear tales beyond just the structure.

It is only then that you may here about the Conways down on Court Street.

* * *

_Prologue: __Present Piece_

December 23rd, 2013

The Conway House was not nearly as well-kept as she expected it to be.

There were shudders falling off their ledges, browning ivy protruding in and out of broken windows, and splotches of faded and new graffiti covering the once-smooth stone of the southern wall. The roof was a multicolored patch of missing or mossy shingles and the grounds were unkempt, grass either totally dead or taken over by what looked like a single, half-frozen pumpkin plant that had slowly diffused over the lawn from its original epicenter near the broken, rusting gate. It was, in short, ramshackle and visibly falling apart.

Though she had only ever realistically knew her great-grandmother through the eyes of a couple books and aging friends, she had a feeling the old woman would be horrified at the idea of one of their family's proud foreign properties in such a state.

No one could live inside the Conway house right now, at least. No wonder Miss Lovely had insisted on getting a hotel room.

But the girl standing on the broken brick path supposed every person had to start a task somewhere. It was now her duty to maintain the family estate, after all, and with her grandmother's passing, that once again included one unspeakably neglected manor that people with names like 'Avlin' and 'Pug'* had apparently once considered their own stomping ground, if their lovely paintings along the side of the house were anything to go by.

It wasn't even easy to get into the place, let alone attempt to fix it up. This was her first time inside the grounds, as the gate had rusted shut long ago and she'd had to hire a man to cut through it before she could enter—and then, of course, there were the pumpkins, which for some reason were still present long after the first frost. She had nearly broken her ankles trying to weave in and out of the bulbous vegetables and uneven bricks that now made up the once-elegant pathway.

She briefly considered hunting down this 'Avlin' and 'Pug.' Surely _they_ knew an easier way in.

The man who'd cut through the gate was still behind her, and she turned to see him gazing, alarmed, probably wondering how he was supposed to safely traverse the makeshift pumpkin patch while clutching something that could cut through iron and most certainly through bone. It didn't help that he was rather top-heavy.

"Just cut them, too, then."

He looked at her. She shrugged, then turned around again, and the sound of a buzzing saw met her ears once more as she did so.

She noticed, as one does when they're suffering from a combination of impatience and boredom, that the sky was a shade paler here than she'd ever seen anywhere else. The pinnacle of the cloudless blue was not so much blue as opal-like infinite emptiness, and the rims of the world around her were the ashen, bitter color of the sky before the snow.

Hearing the buzz grow louder and closer and not wishing to get in the way, the girl took a few steps more towards the ruin, and her view of the sky was blocked by gaping, glassless windows and nimble plant limbs, cone spires and lightning rods. Miss Lovely had said that houses had personalities, but this house certainly didn't appear to, unless 'near death' could be considered a personality trait.

Such a pity. From the outside, the house appeared to be deceased before ever acquiring a chance at life. But the girl suspected differently of the inside.

That was why she was there, after all.

The buzzing stopped, and the man pulled himself up and stood next to her, dwarfing her, but only in stature. He cleared his throat.

She looked at him. "Yes?"

"Uh," he said, rather abashedly, "this… I mean, kid… this' _really_ your house?"

She blinked, looking for all the world as though the question was strange. "Yes, of course it is. Why?"

He again looked wordless, but nevertheless he tried. "It's jus'… well, it didn' seem like the kinda house to have an owner."

She smiled at him, but the eyes seemed to come from a great distance away, and the smile looked as if made of stone. "I assure you, Mr. Downe, that despite how empty it appears or how very little you can see of it, _every_ house has an owner. And when I am eighteen, I will own this. Right now the deed is being held by my guardian, but she has given me her permission to be here, so no worries."

"But… it's…"

"Yes?"

The man was silent once more.

The girl, however, continued to smile. "Please open the door, Mr. Downe. And as I will probably be distracted, I thank you early for the trouble you've gone through. The money has already been given to your landscaping company."

The man said no more to her, but walked up to the stone porch, up to the thick, colossal set of doors, and cut through the rusted metal bolt.

Behind him, the smile turned sad.

"I must say, it's so much easier to walk the path with without those Jack faces. Never much liked them."

So said Miss Lovely as she approached the child, barely a teenager, sitting on the front steps and cradling a small pumpkin in her hands.

"Are you sure that's not because they remind you of someone?" responded the girl in her quick and cheeky way, lifting her own member of the offending 'they' from her lap and presenting it teasingly.

"I'm sure it _is_ because they remind me of someone," replied the older woman, scowling at the pumpkin. "And if that idiotic someone would stop throwing his head at party guests, I probably wouldn't mind them much at all."

"No, you'd find some other vegetable to hate."

"Too right."

The girl placed her pumpkin down before standing from her spot on the stairs and brushing herself off. "Mr. Downe finished up at ten this morning," she said, reaching down and picking up her possession again. "I've been waiting for you all day."

"Your mother wanted to introduce me to a Missus Sandra Babcock—a college friend of hers, I think she said." The woman glanced down at the handle on the door. It was hideously rusted, she noted, but the mechanism bolting the two doors was cut clean through. "In all honestly, I think she was just trying to keep me away from here."

"Mom did say she had some friends around here." The girl said quietly. Miss Lovely watched as she unconsciously began cleaving holes in her pumpkin's skin with her nails, before the girl looked up and said, in her more common, nosy manner, "So? Why'd a simple meet-and-greet take so long? You only went to get breakfast."

"I discovered something I thought you would want to take note of, though I didn't dare point it out in front of your mother."

Miss Lovely pushed on the front doors with both hands, and they creaked, groaned, and even cracked under the pressure, but eventually they did open. Ducking under her spread arms, Miss Lovely's charge unceremoniously skipped her way around a loose floorboard and into the foyer.

"Too strange?" the girl called behind her.

The elder of the two shook her head, though the girl wasn't looking behind at her.

"Too Throckmorton."

The girl paused from her debris hopping, finally turning to face her guardian.

"They're related?"

"Not directly—but circumstantially, at least."

"And they never came here?"

"I'm not sure they knew it themselves, anymore. That's howthese things work, after all."

The girl seemed to think about this, then, as if abandoning the current conversation, began pacing the hall. Agate columns shot up from a filthy blackened floor all the way down the hall like soldiers standing in salute to the new lady of the house, and suddenly Miss Lovely felt as if she were back in the temple at Thebes with the late Lady Theo. Lost in her mental memoirs, she barely took note as her charge walked over to the nearest double-doors and opened one, cradling her pumpkin in her unused arm.

The girl shrieked as a torrent of water gushed out past her legs, and Miss Lovely herself, still further up the hall, had to step upon the base of a nearby marbled pillar to avoid the previously-stagnant filth. Meanwhile, the girl fell, sputtering, as the water slowed.

"What _is_ this!?"

Deciding her charge was more important than her shoes, Miss Lovely stepped off the pillar base and walked over to the girl, helping her up. "I would say they had a Conservatory built, but it seems something went wrong. It certainly needs a lot of fixing."

Sitting up in the water and glaring, the girl looked down at the muddy possession in her hands before throwing it as far as she could down the rest of the darkened hallway.

"Like a lot of things lately, then."

* * *

*Kudos to you if you noticed the joke. Also, for the record, Pug is one of Alvin's accomplices mentioned in the articles of the _Blithe Hollow Bugle_, which were posted on the film's promotional website while it was running in theaters. If you'd like to read them yourself, I'm sure there are some copies floating around Tumblr still.

And no, the girl in this prologue is not an original character. You'll figure it out eventually. Miss Lovely is an original, though she's not really that important, just a sassy assistant.


	2. Stuk 1: Salma

This is the _wordy_ chapter, mainly because it both serves as exposition and is told from the perspective of _Salma._ (Once I thought I'd nailed her voice, I ran with it—and I actually had to cut a bunch out from this because of how dry it was XD).

* * *

Prenderghast Puzzle

Stuk 1: Intro to a Puzzle-Solver

January 4th, 2014

There is something satisfying about having the justifiable means to heckle one's elders, she thought, gingerly sidestepping a crack in the suburban concrete sidewalk.

Salma Ramsay, strolling along the side of the road in a somewhat rundown neighborhood, was a girl that had long since accepted the overall innocence of the legendary Blithe Hollow _Alleged _Witch. But as with many truths, not everyone had, and now that the topic of the truth was brought up by the events of the tercentennial celebration slightly over one year ago, Salma was determined to make her mark on the debate.

Despite the fact that Norman Babcock—now a resident celebrity, not that he hadn't already been one—claimed the alleged witch hadn't been an antagonist, or that there was no evidence at all to suggest the popular concept of witchcraft the town promoted was ever real, many people still clung to the idea that the Witch was an evil creature who had malignantly harassed the people of Blithe Hollow until they had cut her down (1). This concept was something that was hard to change; in the words of Winston Churchill, "History is written by the victors." And their early founders were hardly going to leave behind documents singing praises of the girl they had publicly lynched out of fear and prejudice; that kind of thing had the tendency to make victors look bad, after all.

Salma had a new edge over the common historian, though.

Ringing the Babcocks' front door bell, Salma idly gazed around the yard. A hockey mask and two sticks were lying by the fence—a clear sign of Neil's presence, and a problem with cleaning up after himself. Nearby, an empty lawn chair had seven thoroughly worn copies of _Dream Teen Magazine _on its seat, a copy of the _Blithe Hollow Bugle _crisply folded and untouched nearby. Norman seemed to have left his zombie action figures in the yard again, and a stray cat was currently enjoying smacking them around between its two front paws as it sprawled lazily on the grass.

The door opened, but it wasn't Norman.

Courtney stared at her. "Norman hasn't been missing homework again or something, has he?"

Salma shook her head. "I've got something I thought he should look at. Well, Coraline thought he should look at. Do you know where he is?"

"On a _Saturday?_ No clue. He could be, like, _anywhere_; weekends _are_ his busy days, you know."

Salma knew that quite well. Norman was used to being avoided, but ever since his ability had been proven genuine the dead and the living alike never seemed to stop having questions, messages, or jobs for him to do. Norman's 'adoring public,' as Neil had so affectionately put it, had been told off by the older Babcocks for distracting Norman when he should be doing his school work (well, the living had been, Salma wasn't quite sure about the mechanics behind telling off something one couldn't see). Nowadays most waited until Saturday and Sunday, for fear that cheerleading maneuvers and poor driving skills could be creatively used as a kind of weapon of mass destruction.

"Like, what'd you want to show him, anyways?" Courtney asked.

Salma looked at her, unibrow shrinking together in thought. "Well, I guess you _are_ related." She looked through the archway into the living room. "May I sit down? I feel this is going to be a rather long talk."

Slightly alarmed (because the only other time she'd heard someone use that phrase in real life, her grandmother had died), Courtney walked into the living room and sat down on the couch while Salma took the armchair.

"So…?"

Salma cleared her throat. "One week ago, at the end of the winter vacation, I was given this book by Coraline Jones." Salma lifted up the leather book, showing it to Courtney. The poor girl looked utterly confused, but took the book nonetheless. She didn't open it, instead waiting for Salma to go on. "I've already preformed a considerably extensive background check on her—"

"Whoa, _what?"_

Salma blinked. "I ran a background check after receiving this diary. I couldn't understand how it came to be in her possession. I still can't, actually. Other than a few… descriptive resemblances, there seems to be no connection between her and this book."

"…"

"What's wrong?"

Courtney shook her head and massaged her temples. "…nothing. Keep going?"

"Gladly," Salma stiffened up. "The reason why it is strange for Coraline to have had _this_ journal is because she is not at all related with Blithe Hollow, and from what I can tell, neither is her family. Yet the writer of this diary lived here, in this town, and was born here more than three hundred years ago."

There. Salma knew that bit of information would get the blonde's attention. Ever since the tercentennial, 'three hundred years ago' was the key term to getting some very interesting reactions from anyone with the last name Babcock. And Courtney was blonde, not stupid.

"So I'm guessing there's more to it than just a simple diary." Courtney stated, with all the airs of someone searching for mines. She pulled the ends of her long, blonde ponytail over her shoulder and began toying with them unconsciously with her index finger.

"Actually, it _is,_ but that does not exclude it from being important. This diary was written by the daughter of the Honorable Judge Jonathan Hopkins between the dates of September 29th, 1711 and October 3rd, 1712, after which it looks like many pages were torn out. Though she didn't mention where she found it—" Salma said with glaringly obvious annoyance, "—Coraline left in a note and explanation that, along with the book, she found a bunch of rough drafts for letters that looked as though they had been written on the same material as the diary pages. She didn't bring them here with her because they're in England, apparently, and so fragile they couldn't be brought over at the time. After Norman reads the diary, I plan on asking her to find a way to send them over next time she visits the country."

Courtney seemed to have frozen. Well, Salma admitted wryly, that was often the reaction she got when she talked for long durations; Norman's moniker for her wasn't completely inaccurate. She certainly was "a Brain." Unfortunately, this often set others on edge.

"So what's _in_ the diary?" Courtney said finally, eyes narrowed. The name 'Hopkins' still probably brought up unpleasant memories of a rotting corpse riding in the middle passenger's seat.

Salma smiled. "Only a near-complete account of the events that lead to the Blithe Hollow Witch Trials, and, of course, the Trials themselves. But that isn't the reason why it's a big deal."

"It's not?" Courtney asked. She may have never spent much time reading anything besides text messages, but even she knew that entire diaries devoted to important historical events didn't just fall out of the sky.

"No, there are plenty accounts of the Trials," Salma said, and for the first time she couldn't keep the victorious smirk off her face. "For one, this diary is a highly detailed account of the village devolving into madness, not conquering its dangers. It includes accounts of three complete trials and mentions sixteen others—including the one that ended in execution!(2)" Salma couldn't keep the satisfaction off her face. Before the Tercentennial, she'd been mocked for her rather prickly attitude on the subject of the witch trials, given that nobody wanted to be told the town's opinion was incorrect. Her opinion was slightly more accepted now, but it was good to know there was _proof _of this injustice, and proof that—unlike the girl's ghost—they could actually see.

Salma composed herself again. Best not get too hasty.

"But the main factor that makes this account extraordinary is that it focuses on the victim's lives—most contemporary sources go out of their way to discourage thinking of the victims as human." She sighed. "As you may imagine, then, this diary discusses your family quite a lot—well, your maternal family, anyways. I was concerned that Norman might not want this information being disclosed, which is why I want him to look through it."

"What?" Courtney asked. "Of course he would! He's always visiting her grave and stuff. Like, I think he would be happy if someone could actually show the town she wasn't evil."

"I don't think you understand the contents of this diary," Salma said, sending a meaningful, stern look at the blonde. The only look she got back was more of her constant confusion. "This diary contains _extensive_ insight into the lives of specific individuals in your extended family, and while I personally would love to shove this book into a few local tourist agencies' _faces,_" Salma's voice took on that particularly passionate tone again, before reigning herself in, "it occurred to me that your family may not want _all that_ out in the open. Particularly since your brother seems to have inherited far more in the ways of that specific branch of the family than you."

She got a sort of glazed stare in return. "What."

Perhaps Salma was being too subtle? The blonde still looked lost.

Fine then. No more beating around the bush.

"This diary contains a lot of information about the Prenderghast family's more _eccentric_ talents." She said forcefully, holding the book into the air with a jerk and waiting for Courtney to take it. "Specifically, talents similar to, oh, _seeing spirits._"

The implications seemed to dawn on the cheerleader at last. "So, like… this has information about people like my brother in it?"

Salma nodded.

"But I thought… how… like, if she's, like, the judge's daughter, what's she doing knowing all about the witch?" At Salma's glare, Courtney quickly backtracked. "Not that she, like, _was_ a witch, but everyone kinda thought she was at the time, right? So, like, how's the Judge's daughter supposed to know anything?"

"I brought it over for Norman to read and find out. It's a very… enlightening read, and the author was an unusual type of person. You could read it, if you like. It's still your family, even if it might not hit as close to home for you as it does for Norman."

"Nah," Courtney said. She glanced at the book in her hands, and noticed that it was slightly open. Curly, ornate handwriting could be seen through the cracks. "If it's stuff on my little brother, I'll wait till he's around. We can read it together." She opened the book a little and stared at the writing. "Well, we'll _decode_ it together," she corrected, looking down at the squiggly words.

"Admirable," Salma commented lightly. "May I have a drink before I go, please?"

"You're not going to stick around and tell Norman about the book? Isn't that why you, like, came? And drinks are in the fridge, inside of the door. Sorry, Norman says you're into, like, vitamin water and stuff, but all we've got is soda and juice."

"I can make do." Salma got up from the armchair, left the living room, and walked down the hall to the kitchen.

Courtney went to put the book down when a single phrase caught her eye. It was near the end of the book, close to where a group of pages were ripped out and even closer to where the writer had stopped writing, and was far more legible than the earlier loops. It read:

"_The people of this village would hang the sun, if they could figure out how to reach it. Clearly it burns over them with such unnatural power—flying literally into the face of God."_

Courtney wasn't the best at school. She had better things to do, like getting pedicures and picking up guys and putting her basketball tosses on YouTube. She'd never done particularly well with any of her subjects, and English was her worst... but she was pretty sure the author was just a tad bitter about something.

Unusual author indeed.

* * *

_AN: Haha, Salma's so wordy. Mastering the "Insufferable Genius" voice wasn't too hard, though, as I'm naturally wordy myself (as you might have realized). On the other hand, it was pretty funny to switch from 'snobby well-educated Salma perspective' to 'cheerleader valley-girl Courtney Babcock voice' during their conversation. I didn't intend for the contrast, but it sounds funny when read through, especially if you accentuate all the 'likes.'_

_(1): Yes, the townsfolk of Blithe Hollow saw the ghosts at the end of the movie. But a rampant miscommunication between movie and fandom seems to be over the town's state of belief at the end of the movie. Simply seeing someone doesn't tell you which one of them was in the wrong; if sight could tell us that, we wouldn't need a court system. All the citizens of Blithe Hollow did see the zombies, and later their ghosts (briefly), but all they could know from that is that the spirit of the convicted witch from 300 years ago raised the dead and terrorized the town for a whole night until Norman could stop it. That's not exactly going to endear them to the reality that she's not an actual witch or that she was ever a good person, and it is definitely not going to stop their tourist-craving tendencies. While Norman did try to tell the mob that they were repeating what happened, he wasn't very specific, was he? "They did something awful and were cursed for it" is really, really vague—especially considering exactly how many awful things someone can do in the world, particularly in the Puritan era. Plus, without clarity or further knowledge, the statement reveals nothing about Aggie being innocent._

_(2): When I finally got around to reading the novelization of ParaNorman, it came to my attention that there were many, many more people put on trial than were noted in the movie; however, the town only makes a big deal about Aggie. In my headcanon, this is because the others managed to escape by only getting sentences in prison (something that occurred if a "witch" admitted and repented for his/her crime and was more affluent than the norm) or by running off into the woods, as Aggie clearly attempted but failed._

**_Historical Notes & Extras:_**

_This is the place that will be filled with all sorts of extra information to add to the world if you wish to know more. Depending on whose story we're following in the chapter, this may have information on this story's version of Blithe Hollow (for Salma's and Norman's chapters), like other important graves in the graveyard or notes on what happened to minor characters after the movie; or on Puritan Blithe Hollow (for Julia's and Aggie's chapters), like the floor plan of the Hopkins House or the Prenderghasts' home; or on Louvé Manor (for Coraline's chapters), which will be introduced in the next "Extra Content" section._

_The Extra for this chapter is character info! Many key things have been kept out, though, to avoid spoilers._

_Extra Content: Julia Hopkins_

_Born August 1st, 1698, Julia was the second out of three children in the Hopkins family. Before "everything went wrong," her eldest brother Ezekiel was being raised to become a judge like her father and her younger sister Abigail was an adorable menace to the human race._

_Julia was born with two physical abnormalities—a strange "disfigurement" (as her father put it) and a disorder which affects her sense of smell. Because of these things, her father never let her out of the house for fear she would be seen by the rest of the village, and when he did she always wore a veil. His excuse was that she was a sickly child—and indeed she was, though he often over-dramatized it—so no one questioned it. Until the spring of 1712, she was only ever seen by the village at family funerals, when it would be considered improper to leave her at home._

_Julia was extremely well-read, given that she spent almost all her time in her room with nothing to do. Though it was uncommon for a woman to be educated at that time, her mother was insistent on all her children becoming learned individuals and, when her husband refused to provide Julia with a tutor, gave her eldest daughter lessons herself. These only stopped when her mother was no longer considered fit to give them._

_But enough of my rambling! Next is Coraline's turn!_


	3. Stuk 2: Coraline

Stuk 3: Intro to a Search Party

June 18th, 2013

Coraline knew she didn't have a good track record when it came to new places.

She had a lot of experiences to back that statement up, too, no matter how positive her mother usually tried to persuade her to be. Originally, they had all lived in Lynn, Massachusetts—her, her father, her mother, and her grandmother. She didn't know how they had ended up there, as her father was from Oregon and her mother from England, and she didn't know why they moved out of it, either. But when she was four, they packed up all of their things and moved to Illinois. It was a decision that decidedly sucked for all of 'them, and from there they moved to Michigan.

Michigan probably always would be one of Coraline's favorite states. There was water everywhere, and it had bright trails to explore, and all of the people talked with funny accents. But it hadn't started out good for her there; on her first day of elementary school she'd accidentally knocked over the principal's toupee and immediately got written up for 'assaulting a staff member.' The embarrassed rage of the principal was nothing to shake a stick at—or a dousing rod, as it were—and things had gotten pretty bad until a couple kids who'd seen what happened stepped in. She hadn't gotten off to a good start, no, but at least she had made friends.

Then there was _The Move._ Though Coraline had moved several times in her life, _that _one stuck out as the one of most consequence. The Move was something Coraline didn't often talk about and brought up even less. She quite liked Oregon now—the misty forests, the old house they lived in, and her friend Wybie, although she'd rather punch him than admit it—but that still didn't disregard what she'd went through when she'd still considered the place 'new.'

So Coraline thought that her reservations about traveling to some strange place in another country for the summer were completely justifiable, really. Every time she moved, more than just location seemed to change in her life, and the fact that this place had supposedly belonged to her family didn't help that notion. Especially since it was her _mother's_ side.

"Coraline," her mother hissed next to her, "Stop it."

Rolling her eyes, Coraline stopped bouncing her feet off the floor of the limousine. She satisfied herself instead with rolling the window next to her up and down as her mother drove herself crazy. Outside the vehicle, fog rolled over gently sloping farms, and behind it Coraline could see the glowing outlines of people and farm animals and vast rows of plants.

She couldn't see her mother's face, but she knew she was about to throw a fit. Served her right.

Coraline remembered very little about her great-grandmother Theo. The old woman had died in 2003 at the age of one-hundred and eight. She'd been incredibly old, but incredibly young in some way Coraline had known when she was a child but couldn't put her finger on now for the life of her. Coraline had turned four a month after the funeral, she remembered that much, and she hadn't at all felt like celebrating. She'd had a party, as her mother insisted, and she'd gotten to eat a large portion of the cake and open lots of presents, but when the day was over all she did was go upstairs to bed and cradle the present she'd gotten from her great-grandmother just before she died. Coraline couldn't even remember exactly what it had been anymore; all she knew was that she didn't have it now. She sometimes thought that it might've been something small, like a marble, or even something pretty, but whenever she tried to focus on the memory she just talked herself out of it.

Coraline had done that with a lot of her memories of the past, unfortunately. She couldn't remember very much at all about anyone from her mother's family except her mother. Coraline's grandmother, Theo's daughter and the mother of Coraline's own mother, had gone missing when Coraline was eleven and all she really knew about the woman was that she had horrible taste in furniture. Coraline's mother, unfortunately, didn't think so, and it was that ugly, ash-stained furniture that decorated the room in their apartment that Coraline hated most.

Perhaps this lack of familial memory was why it was such an insult, what her mother had done.

Back in reality, Coraline's mother looked like she wanted to shout to the driver to turn around. Coraline had never seen her look this antsy and uncomfortable. Her mother didn't even notice Coraline's gaze; she spent the entire time glaring at the divider between the chauffeur and his passengers and rubbing the faux leather grip of her large fiord purse with her thumb.

In another time, that purse had held _secrets_, and as Coraline knew, ignorance of such things could be bliss if it weren't so dangerous. Secrets had the tendency to change lives faster than wars. It was because of a secret (that was no longer a secret) that she and her mother were here.

That secret came to light one week ago, when Coraline had answered the front door. Usually she didn't, unless it was Wybie at the door, because there was simply no one who would want to visit the Pink Palace. Her parents' editors called on the phone, her friends from school called on the phone… everyone called on the phone. Nobody visited—not in person.

But this person _had_ visited, and very much in person. He was a British man; Coraline knew that from the accent. He was tall and dark, but not very handsome; he had a squished nose like he'd fallen down the stairs and a head the shape of an upstanding miniature coffin.

He'd introduced himself as a lawyer from London and said that he needed to discuss things with her mother. When Coraline had asked him why her mother needed a British lawyer, he replied that he was here with the business of _inheritance._

It is something of a shock to find out what _inheritance_ means sometimes.

"You'll get your first look at the Louvé in a minute, miss," said the driver, rolling down the retractable divider and winking at her in the rear-view mirror. She didn't need him to roll it down—she could see him just fine anyways—but she assumed her mother needed it, and so didn't comment.

"Out here? Why is this place all the way in the middle of nowhere?" Coraline asked him.

"It's not so much the middle of nowhere, Miss, as people aren't allowed to build. You can't see the Louvé yet, but the estate runs for miles. We've already been on the property for about five minutes. Look to your left."

Coraline leaned over to get a better look out the left side of the limousine, though her mother's glowing form was obstructing the view. Sliding to the right on her seat, she looked across and saw a great stone… something, right at the edge of where a section of grassy lawn met the tree line. It looked something like a monument, and even had what seemed to be an angel at the top. It had an unusual sort of glow itself.

"What is it?" she asked the driver.

"Throckmorton family crypt. Or Lynwood family. Back in the 1600s the only heir to this place was a female not unlike yourself, and when she married the surname changed with her."

Coraline tried to ignore the dirty looks her mother was giving the crypt, as though she wished the building itself would die, by trying to count the tiny walls that encircled the grounds, leading up to—

"An' there we are." Said the driver proudly. He seemed to be enjoying introducing the estate to her. "That there is the Louvé. Beautiful, isn't it? Built in 1794 after an earthquake did the original manor in; rather strange, that, we never get that kind of thing around here usually. Its construction is Georgian in style—"

He was right, it was certainly beautiful, in an old and large sort of way. There had to be over fifty windows all facing in their direction as they approached. What that said about the other sides of the building, she didn't want to think about. The brick road in front of them seemed to encompass the estate and passed directly by the entrance to the manor, which rested above the driving loop by some several dozen marble steps. These steps lead to a magnificent entranceway with an underhang supported by Corinthian columns and a thick wooden door inlaid with stained glass window panes.

The manor itself was symmetrical except for the chimneys, which popped up at odd places here and there between two towers at opposite ends of the roof, and was wide and rectangular with what looked like two outdoor rooms jutting from the sides. They were both the same shape, circular and dome-like, both lit from the inside like the sun itself, but one was a simple covered area and the other entirely housed by glass. Coraline supposed the second was some kind of greenhouse, but she couldn't guess what the first was.

There were pristine and grand gardens covering almost all of the land within sight of the manor. She knew that Nana Theo had paid in advance for the place's upkeep while no one lived in it, but maintenance and decoration were two very different things.

Looking at it all with the feeling of an ant staring at an elephant, Coraline couldn't imagine why her mother would hate this place, except for the fact that she and Coraline's grandmother had been snubbed from the will. But she'd hated it before all that, hadn't she? They'd left England and all their riches behind long before Coraline was born, after all.

It had to have been big, whatever had happened. Whatever happened had to have also been why great-grandmother Theo would skip her daughter and granddaughter and hand off everything she owned to the toddler great-granddaughter she'd only met once or twice.

But it was the question of what that mysterious cause _was_ that made her blood boil with anticipation, because, in Coraline's mind, the explanation had to be inside the very property her mother had fled—which meant it was something Coraline could very well find, if she looked hard enough.

It was something she resolved to discover.

* * *

_AN: Don't worry. While this all seems disjointed, it'll connect in the end. Each chapter is a puzzle piece after all; they don't usually make sense at first._

_For those who have guessed, the third series that will mix in with this is the Theodosia Throckmorton series by R. L. LaFevers—that's the series that I mentioned earlier. None of the characters will appear except in (possibly) flashbacks, but it is part of the world. You DON'T need to have knowledge of the series to understand the story, though—it's that minimally invasive. All the plot-important stuff will mostly have nothing to do with it; knowing of the series will only allow you to get a few references and a few deeper nuances._

_(I would recommend the series, though. Seriously. Especially if you're a fan of Harry Potter, ParaNorman, or Coraline. Or historical fiction. It's like ParaNorman meets Indiana Jones (no joke) with Ancient Egyptian magic set in an Edwardian expy of the British museum, with a main character that has Norman's eyes, Coraline's sass, Salma's brain, and the workload of a thousand curse-breaking Bill Weasleys. What results is hilarious, fascinatingly detailed, and at times very poignant. It's hard to be someone more intelligent and aware then everyone else, especially if you're a child before children were deemed worthy of any attention and double especially if you're a girl before woman's suffrage was even a thing)._

_Historical Notes & Extras**: Louvé Manor and Lynwood Estate **(once again, censored for spoilers)_

_Louvé Manor was built in 1794 in the Georgian era. The grounds itself rests just to the North of and across the river from Purley on Thames in West Berkshire, and has been in the Throckmorton family for possibly centuries before the Louvé was built, though the exact date is unclear. The land is referred to as "Lynwood Estate," and the actual family name changed around the seventeenth century when the Lady of the manor married into the Throckmorton Earldom. Because the land has been under the ownership of three extremely stubborn matriarchs for the last hundred and fifty years (only broken by ten years between the first and second matriarch, in which the manor was owned by the first's son), the property is the same historic size it ever was, given that no one could get them to sell. The ownership went from widowed Lavinia Throckmorton to her son (briefly), then to his daughter Theodosia, who kept legal ownership of the property until her death at the age of 106, at which she snubbed her daughter and granddaughter and left the property and all her money to her Great Granddaughter Coraline in her will. Coraline, who was not even in elementary school yet, was left with the written condition that she would learn to run the estate herself by the time she reached the age at which she could inherit, and that she was to visit the manor sometime before then and pick up special instructions that Theo had left her. Until then, the estate had appointed managers to oversee maintenance. If Coraline had not met the conditions in the will, she would have been ineligible to inherit._

_Along with Louvé and its grounds, the estate includes several foreign properties and a townhouse in London. Historically, the elite of England would move into a city townhouse at the beginning of the New Year and return to their manors at the end of June (much like the Roman senators of old, only the English did it for socializing and not world domination—well, mostly. Sometimes.)_

**Next update is Act 1, Stuk 1: Julia mocks the public from her window, and Judge Hopkins is angry and awkward.**


	4. Stuk 3: Norman

Prenderghast Puzzle

Stuk 3: From the Same Cloth

January 13th, 2014

The Hopkins House was, in Salma's eyes, the Blithe Hollow Historical Preservation Society's biggest failure, and it annoyed her endlessly to see the HPS parading around it like it was something special. Her annoyance with it was seconded only to her annoyance with the Preservation Society's buying into the tourist industry bit and posting pictures of the Wicked Witch of the West everywhere.

Honestly, if Blithe Hollow really cared about historical preservation, it wouldn't have sold the original house to a shoe factory. By the time anyone figured out the way to a quick buck on the town's history, they'd already up and let most of it be destroyed.

The reproduction house was covered in fake stone on the outside—because the "Preservation Society" had been too cheap to rebuild it the way it had been when they'd destroyed it—and probably didn't look anything like the original. Salma would know; she'd found the old floor plan in the town archives, and while there were no complete diagrams (half the thing was burned in the Tercentennial, no surprise), there was enough to hint at a house _much_ larger than the reproduction.

It looked… off, sitting where it was. Unlike the town hall and green, from which Blithe Hollow had grown around, the reproduction Hopkins House was squished between the HPS headquarters (which had originally been built to house some factory workers) and a grocery store. There was no front yard, which Salma was sure the original had, and there were only three bedrooms inside—even though Salma had a very good source of information telling her that there had once been five people and several servants living in the house with room to spare.

"I don't think we're going to find anything, Salma," Norman said, looking over at her scowling visage. In his hands was the open diary of Julia Hopkins. "And can you be quiet? I'm still in the winter of 1711."

"Oh, just skip to Spring. That's when the important stuff starts." Salma adjusted her glasses and glared up at the house. "Disgusting," she snarled at the row of buildings. "The only things the Historical Preservation Society wants to _preserve_ are their cash and their center of operations! They should have archaeological digs around here, not a headquarters!"

She was attracting quite a lot of attention from both a tour group and the people buying tickets for the tour at said headquarters.

"Salma," Norman said, trying to get her attention. "Salma, stop it." Though used to it, he still wasn't comfortable with people staring at him, and he was getting a lot of looks just from standing next to her.

She scoffed. "Are there even any ghosts around here, Norman? We need to find _something_ more than the diary to prove that it's true."

"There's one who hangs out usually in the back. But…" he searched for the word to use. "I've never really talked to him. Every time I'd say hi, he'd just stare at me. It was creepy."

"Well too bad. We need to get information, Norman, or proof. I'm _sick—_" She turned around again, glaring at the house and the buildings next to it—"of the fact that this town is so—so—"

"Pathetic?" Norman answered, using a word he himself had used many times to describe Blithe Hollow's relationship with its history.

"_Exactly!"_ Salma practically shouted at him. "And when I finally knock them off their high horses—" Norman watched as she wrung her fists in the air.

Norman knew Salma was frustrated. Two years ago, back when he'd hardly known her except as a lab partner, he had thought she was a bit cold and conceited, though with an obvious concern for justice seeing as she had always protested Blithe Hollow's exploitation of the Witch Trials. But now he knew that the usually aloof, somewhat condescending girl absolutely hated the local Historical Preservation Society, and they could rile her in ways that even the dead rising from their graves hadn't managed to. It was probably, he thought, because they'd scoffed at Salma's ideas of respecting Aggie's memory and shunted her to the side like an unenlightened child. As much as Norman appreciated his friend and what she was trying to do for Aggie (and, in a way, him), he personally believed this crusade was a combination of pride, righteous anger, and revenge. He would never mention this, though. She was annoyed enough at him for bringing up the uncomfortable truth that the diary alone probably wasn't going to beat any truth into the HPS's heads, as they would likely call it a forgery.

Sighing to himself, he left her side and approached the tiny alley between the HPS's headquarters and the Hopkins House. She didn't even notice, as a representative had come out of the headquarters and was asking her to leave or he'd call the police. Several tourists had, listening to Salma's tirade, started giving the Society's front doors disapproving looks, and some clerks working the ticket line were looking quite worried.

The alleyway led to the back of the Hopkins House, where they had a reproduction garden ("Ridiculous," Salma had told him, "It's much too small to be anything like Julia's,") and a bike rack for part-timers who worked there. Bending over the flowers and herbs was a middle-aged bearded man with dark hair cut very short along his head. Norman had never before seen the man without his hat on; the phantom hat in question was now lying on the ground next to a tomato plant. With it off, Norman now realized that, were the man's hair longer, it would probably stick straight up much like his own.

"You wouldn't…" Norman began. The man seemed to start and turned around quick to face him. His eyes appeared green-grey in his own spectral haze, but Norman had a feeling they'd once been another color, and he could clearly see the distinct heptagonal shape of the irises*. "You wouldn't happen to be a Prenderghast, would you?"

The man didn't relax at the question; if anything, he stiffened. Instead of looking at Norman, he stared at his feet.

But it didn't matter how uncomfortable he was. Now that he had fully turned around, Norman could see a detail about the man he'd forgotten in all the years he'd avoided him.

Across his chest was a giant, hideously fringed burn mark—almost as though he'd been struck by lightning.

"Who are you?" Norman asked, still staring.

"Name's Kenneth. Haven't gone by anything else since I was seventeen," the man muttered.

"Why are you here?" Norman asked. It was pretty unusual after all; if he saw any deceased members of his maternal family, it was usually up by his uncle's dilapidated house. He had no idea why they were all up there, but they were.

"Too close," said the man, Kenneth. "It was too close to her. She hated me. And… I was waiting to see if she would come back."

'To her.' Wasn't that how the Judge had referred to Aggie? Just as 'her,' never a name?

"You mean Aggie?"

The man flinched again. "Yes… no. It was too close to Agatha, where I died. But she isn't the one I'm waiting here for."

So he was one of the Prenderghasts who knew about the witch's curse. Probably one of the people who'd read _Sleeping Beauty_ at her grave, then. "Who are you waiting for?"

The man sighed at looked up at the house. "The little girl who did the job I was supposed to. Well, she's probably not 'little,' now. And she'd probably punch me again, if she heard me call her that." His gaze was still focused upwards. "This house is nothing like it. Her window's gone."

Norman followed his gaze to one of the second-floor windows of the Hopkins House. "She read the book? A girl in the Hopkins House read the book?"

"What?" The man stared at him as though he were the one acting strangely. "No, no. Julia would never do that."

Norman froze. Queitly, slowly, realizing the implications of what the man had just said, he asked, "You knew Julia Hopkins?"

"Knew her? With how many times my mother babied the girl like she was a third daughter?" The man scoffed. "Of course I knew her. And she knew me. But she did not like me. I don't much blame her."

The man seemed to have thought about this awhile, and even though his words were slow, he kept speaking. Self-loathing coated his voice. "Julia hated me then. I can't imagine what she'd do to me now. After all, I read from the book."

So he _was_ one of the people who read from the book. But it was like he suspected; he knew Julia, and Julia was only a few years older than Aggie…

"You were the first person," Norman said, almost to himself. "Or one of the first. You put Aggie to sleep."

Worn face scrunched in sorrow and guilt, the man still stared at where Julia's window had been. "She would have been a great older sister. Pity what happened to her family."

"What happened?"

"Yellow Jack, I heard, but I never listened much to rumors. Took her sister, her brother and her mother, and she was left with old Judge Hopkins, a curmudgeon if I ever knew one. She didn't stay long herself, though."

"She died?"

"No, no. She left. The Judge was a broken man. But I'll wait."

Rubbing his temples at the strain of trying to put together the man's incoherent and mildly broken statements, Norman asked, "Then why are you here? If you're waiting for Julia, she probably died a long time ago, wherever the place is she went to."

"I know that. But I'll wait."

The man was hopeless, and a little pathetic if Norman were honest with himself. The curse was over—the man, Kenneth, must've known that. Everyone in town knew that, living or dead.

"That's her book," the man said suddenly. Norman had no clue how he knew, because his gaze hadn't left the upstairs windows.

The younger of them looked down at Julia's diary, which he still had in his right hand, book closed around his thumb marking the page he was on. "Uh, yes."

"She'll come. She kept sending letters for me to put on Agatha's grave. I locked them up and buried them in the yard here."

And that was what he needed.

"Where?" Norman asked. Salma would kill him if he didn't get the information.

"By the old horse stable," answered Kenneth offhandedly.

"And where's that?"

"Gone."

"But the letters must still be there."

"Yes, they must."

"Then can you show me where?"

"I don't know. The land has changed. All I know is that they were by the old horse stables."

Norman groaned.

"It's alright. She'll come."

He was beginning to seriously consider the fact that his family might just have actually been insane like everyone thought. This was three out of three in terms of people he knew who had his ability verses people in his family with mildly to moderately unstable behavior, and it was starting to really unnerve him.

"Why are you so certain she'll come?"

"Because Julia always did my job better than me," said Kenneth. "And if Aggie needs her, she'll find a way to come."

And then he disappeared, not into the light of ascension, but through the wall of the reproduction Hopkins House, and Norman saw him no more.

* * *

_AN: So we've got more information on members of the Prenderghast family and Julia's relationship to them. And a semi-important character was introduced! Kenneth was apparently a Prenderghast, and whatever job he had, Julia did it better._

_Also: ghosts! Particularly, a ghost named Kenneth Prenderghast. I found the idea of ghosts interesting in ParaNorman, because they don't portray ghosts as scary; it not monsters that haunt people, but rather the past (which is perhaps why we both fear and love ghosts). _

**_Historical Notes & Extras:_**

_*Salma: I feel the need to justify her aggressive stubbornness, before anyone cries "Out of character!" Salma is openly rude to Norman in the movie and, while kinder in the book (which I finally got around to reading), shows a blatantly know-it-all attitude and a great dislike of being wrong. She also hated Norman originally, as shown in the pre-movie released copies of the Blithe Hollow Bugle, in which she writes to the advice column a couple months before the movie seeking counsel over what to do about the fact that Norman, whom she calls 'delusional' and blames for sabotaging the school play, is apparently "trying to steal her best friend" Neil (the columnist tells her to give up and get another best friend, because Neil's a lost cause)._

_There are three modern socially outcasted characters in the setting of ParaNorman: Norman, for the obvious, Neil, because he's fat and has Irritable Bowel Syndrome and sweats when he walks too much and etc. etc., and Salma, because… well, it's implied she's too thoroughly disagreeable to have friends, and only Neil puts up with her. Salma likes being right. She has a superior, distanced, almost tired attitude for all of the movie and most of the book, but she does get rather insistent to the point of argumentative about the terminology and stereotypes used to address the "Alleged" witch, which is the only thing people are willing to argue with her about._

_She's got a good reason to argue, but it's the way she presents it that causes the problem. One could say she's the like the musical _1776_'s John Addams—yes, yes, he's presented as right, and we as the audience_ _know he's right_,_ but he's so obnoxious about the fact that he _is_ right that nobody's willing to side with him. "For God's sake, John, sit down!" _

_*The Hopkins House: __The Hopkins' family residence (referred to as simply "The Hopkins House" by Blithe Hollow history tours) was the only building in town made of stone at the time of the Witch Hysteria. The Honorable Judge Jonathan Hopkins had it built in 1692 for his wife, Cecily, who was noted to have a great fear of fire. Despite being built deliberately to weather flames, the original house burned down in 1736 by uncaught arsonists (an embittered Julia congratulated them in her journals). The remains were left untouched until 1807, when the land was purchased by budding cobbler and future industrialist Robert McLaney and the stone shell torn down in favor of building a small shoe store and later factory which closed its doors in 1879. In 1942, Lena Belfry, a representative of the local Blithe Hollow Historical Preservation Society, started a campaign to rebuild the house using the floor plan specified in the legal documents found in the old court house (later used and immortalized as the Historical Town Hall). Ironically, this action of historical preservation (which rather failed, as the resulting house looked nothing like the original) kicked off the tourist craze, which desecrated the public's view of the Witch Trials, especially since _The Wizard of Oz_ had come out in theaters only three years earlier._

_The Hopkins family was rather opulent by Puritan standards due to money on both the paternal and maternal sides of the family, the latter of which died long before the turn of the 17th century and was survived only by Cecily, Julia's mother. Architecture-wise and out of story context, the Hopkins House is roughly based off of the Spencer-Peirce-Little House in Newbury, Massachusetts, built in 1690. The Hopkins House, however, is much smaller, as Judge Hopkins was a much more modest (and boring) man. Nevertheless, the original house had many rooms, including a kitchen, a dining room, a small library, a nursery, the servants' quarters, the Master's chambers, the Mistress' bedroom, and two other bedrooms for Ezekiel and Julia. After Abigail and Ezekiel died, the nursery was converted into a storage area, with the young master's chamber converted into the Judge's study._

**Next time: Update on Act 3 again, as Coraline explores the grounds of Louvé, and we get our first glimpse at the woman who came before her. Also, Mel practices her Medusa impression. **


	5. Stuk 4: Coraline

Prenderghast Puzzle

Stuk 4

June 18th, 2013

When Coraline and her mother stepped out of the limousine and onto the marble front steps of the giant manor, they were immediately greeted by fourteen glowing men and women dressed in neatly cut dark clothing. One of them, a woman even more professionally dressed than the rest, separated from the neat lines of people and approached them.

"It's very nice to meet you," said the woman who glowed the most, all business-like. She was addressing Coraline with her greetings and shaking her hand, but never once turned to Coraline's mother. "We've been expecting you for quite some time; I didn't anticipate it would take so many years for you to come."

Testing to see what would happen, Coraline turned her head and pretended to look out towards the gardens. Immediately, out of the corner of her eye, she saw her mother and the woman glare at each other. Turning back, the woman was smiling at her again. It was as though Coraline were imagining things, and she might have thought so, too, if it weren't for the nasty faces her mother was still making.

"I am the Head of Staff, Kyriaki Lovely. I am in charge of the maintenance of this property." She beamed at her again, and Coraline thought it so strange that the woman who was glaring so fiercely at her mother could smile so pleasantly at her.

There was silence. Belatedly realizing that Miss Lovely was waiting for her to speak, she grinned and complimented, "You're doing a wonderful job. I thought maintenance was like, repairs and stuff, not gardening. It's amazing!"

The fact that her mother was now glaring at her was something Coraline was willing to ignore for now.

"Well now," Miss Lovely said, "You've only just arrived. I'll have Gyrton and Cooney bring your things to your quarters." Two men left the line of people in uniforms and began moving towards the trunk of the limousine. "Would you like me to give you a tour before you see your rooms? The Louvé is rather large, and for newcomers it can be difficult to navigate without foreknowledge of the layout." She turned, still smiling at Coraline as the blunette instinctively followed her up the steps, shadowed closely by her glaring mother.

"Do I get to choose my room?" Coraline asked. "I mean, I've never been here before and I bet there are tons of rooms to choose from."

Miss Lovely just smiled knowingly. "You may choose another if you wish, but your Great-Grandmother already left a room fitted for you. If it is not to your tastes, then of course we will move your things, but…"

"I'd like to see it!" Coraline interrupted.

Miss Lovely continued to smile as if nothing else in the world made her happier. "We have to pass that room on our tour anyways. First, though, a tour of the grounds."

At the top of the steps, before even reaching the front doors, they took a left into a vaulted hallway and followed that until they were at the other side of the house. There the trio came out onto a covered patio which, as Coraline looked, eventually turned into a path and lead off into what seemed to be the center of the gardens. On this path was a white roofless carriage drawn by two shining horses.

Coraline boggled. "_Horses?_ Really?"

Miss Lovely apparently mistook this for disagreement. "I beg your forgiveness, miss. I admit it was a bit presumptuous of me, but your great-grandmother loved the horses, and I'm afraid they haven't had much to do since she died. I had hoped to give them a workout. If you don't particularly like horses, we can, of course, always drive."

"No," Coraline said, feeling awkward about people making such a big deal over her opinion. She could be picky, but not _that_ picky. "No, I like horses. I just wasn't expecting this."

Her mother, on the other hand, looked like she wanted to sit on one of the patio chairs and glue her feet to the floor.

The grounds of Louvé Manor were unlike anything Coraline had ever experienced before—and that included the strange garden of the spider-like monster she'd fought three years previously. The manor was surrounded by paths, gardens and ponds for the nearest half-mile, then broke off into a sweeping viridian lawn.

"That's the stables, over there," said Miss Lovely, pointing at a noble-looking white building that looked like it belonged on the old plantations Coraline had once seen on family vacations in Georgia. The horses attached to the carriage brayed, and Miss Lovely frowned. "We took them out not a moment too soon. They've gotten far too comfortable staying inside their stables. They already want to go back."

"Good," Coraline's mother grumbled. The remark fell on deliberately deaf ears—Coraline was still miffed because the woman had hid this from her, and Miss Lovely, mysteriously enough, seemed to have had plenty of practice already in the art of ignoring Melina Jones. This only made Coraline more suspicious of what may or may not have occurred at the manor.

Across from the stables began the woods, and as the carriage clopped along under the arbor of the treetops, Miss Lovely continued explaining the history of the grounds. "This wood was used for game hunting."

"Hunting?" The woods were almost silent. Coraline couldn't imagine there was much to shoot at.

"Yes, I believe it was one of your great-great grandfather's favorite pastimes. Ah, and this is Frank's house," Miss Lovely pointed to their left as they came out of the trees. "I'm sorry if you liked the woods, but I thought the shortest route would be best, since I would be able to show you where Frank Holzknecht stays. He's the estate's Head Caretaker of the Grounds."

The Head Caretaker's house was rather nice, though small, and had the same polished but alien look the rest of the property seemed to have. Perhaps Coraline just wasn't used to all the fanciness yet.

"Huh. He's not here," commented Miss Lovely confusedly, and Coraline wondered how she knew. "He must be up at the Armoury. We've been having some trouble with the spire lately, and the stairs to reach it collapsed centuries ago." Chuckling, she leaned in to Coraline. "Late last October a bunch of men lit a fire at the top. We figured out who it was easily, but the Armoury's stone has been crumbling for a while and Frank thinks they made it worse. Sent him right into a storm!"

The woods, which had been following them on their right, fell off and made room for a giant circular dome, which Coraline thought must've been the newest building she'd seen yet on the estate. It shined a little less than the older buildings, and thus was harder to see, but was still beautiful.

"The Observatory," Miss Lovely answered without prompting. "It was Master Henry—your Great-Great Uncle's—favorite place in all of Purley on Thames, or so Lady Theodosia always said. He avoided the Observatory in general, though; it was full of his sister's research and supposedly he didn't have the patience for it. Still, he added quite a lot to the Observatory's library, if you would like to see."

"Uh, no thank you," Coraline answered, craning her neck to look behind her as the Observatory moved into the distance. "I mean, not right now. I'd like to see the rest of the place first, please."

"Of course," Miss Lovely answered.

As Coraline turned around to face front again she caught a glimpse of her mother's face. Her mother, who had been lurking quietly behind her the entire ride, was also staring back at the Observatory. For the first time since she'd been there, she wasn't glaring; instead she seemed to ponder quietly to herself, her flashing eyes unreadable.

After the Observatory was a great empty field. Unlike the pristine lawn that pervaded the rest of the Lynwood Estate, the grass here had been allowed to fallow and several moderately sized trees were growing untended in the middle, and shined brightly, though a strange gold color.

"Why is the grass in this field so tall?"

Miss Lovely looked at her. "Do you wish for it to be cut?"

"No, no, it's just… it seems a little strange, because every other open field around here is mowed."

Miss Lovely smiled. "Lady Theodosia had her reasons for everything; now that the land is yours, you may soon find your own."

Now _that_, Coraline thought, was a strange way of putting things. She could again feel her mother's intense, heated gaze behind her.

Across the field from the Observatory was the Armoury, a single castle tower rising from a sea of overgrown grass. The lawn around it, however, had been mowed to grant access.

"The Armoury," Miss Lovely said quietly, and Coraline could see the glowing figure of a man through the thin rectangular gaps in the stone as he walked around the interior. While the Observatory might have been the youngest building, the Armoury was certainly the oldest.

Coraline noticed her mother gave this building a pensive look as well.

Lost in thought about what this could mean, the youngest female of the group barely noticed when Miss Lovely tried to direct her attention to the canal, which led to the Thames, and the five—_five _—guest houses that were all placed relatively near to it with the exception of the last.

The fifth guest house was not near the canal. Instead, the little group only caught a glimpse of it once they were about to make their last turn passed the Family Crypt and head back to the Louvé.

Coraline immediately changed her assessment. Now that she could get a better look at it, she decided that, while the crypt had definitely been renovated several times and the Armoury appeared unchanged, the crypt was most certainly the oldest building on the estate.

"I suppose it would be best to get out, briefly. I know this is your first visit to the estate since it legally passed to you, but is it also your first time visiting your Great-Grandmother's grave?"

Coraline nodded.

"Well, everything must have a first time. And what has come before you is always important." Miss Lovely hopped out of the carriage and held out her hand to allow Coraline a more graceful exit. Coraline's mother, on the other hand, didn't try to leave.

Glancing at her, Miss Lovely added quietly, "Not even going to visit her grave? Did a simple family tradition embitter you so much?"

An acrid glare was all she received in return.

The Crypt was a monument raised several feet off the ground that consisted of an illuminating marble dome held in the air by nine thick pillars. Along the inside of the dome were gemstone mosaics each depicting five inch faces and their corresponding names, rows of which spiraled out from the apex. Though there were dozens, hundreds maybe, there was still quite a lot of uncovered stone. Beneath these faces of old was a walled-in gaping hole where a spiraling staircase wound its way down into what her mother would probably see as the inky blackness of the Crypt. As it was, Coraline could barely see anything either while peering down—it was so intense it was blinding.

Coraline instead sat on the wall by the stairs, gazing up at the faces. Eyes darting around the dome, she took in every feature she could in such a short time. Closest to her was the slightly worn visage of a man with a gruff-looking face but silky hair labeled _Lucas Throckmorton (1654-1683)_. To the left of him was _Nathaniel Throckmorton, _whose date markings were severely damaged, as well as about three dozen others, though their faces got more poorly drawn and nondescript over time. To the right of Lucas were two men named _Edius Throckmorton (1683-1732) _and _Roderick Throckmorton (1732-1743)_. Well, obviously the family name hadn't changed much during the earlier years of the estate. After Roderick was a slightly mildewed image of a woman named Julia Throckmorton (whose dates that looked like it had been scrubbed far too many times in an attempt to get it clean to do any good, followed by the cracked face of a man named Ezekiel. After that was the more legible face and name of Edius Throckmorton II, followed by another Julia, though the her and her predecessor's labeled dates didn't match up. After that was a man named Anderson, his son, and a woman who must've been his son's wife.

"Your Great-Grandmother is there," Miss Lovely called, still standing by the carriage.

She was, and Coraline found her, but only because her face was labeled by a name. Instead of the old, aged face she remembered vaguely from her early childhood, the picture showed a young, thin woman with dark, murky, nearly gold eyes, pale skin, full cheeks and obsidian hair that shot straight from her head to her elbows.

It was always strange to see pictures of people, because when Coraline looked at people, they seemed to glow, and pictures didn't. Still, despite the absence of the familiar characteristic, she was slightly spooked at the visual similarities between the woman and her mother. Looking away, Coraline returned to the carriage.

"What were those dates on the pictures?" Coraline asked. "They didn't make sense. Almost all of them lined up perfectly, and one of them was only a span of eleven years even though the man in the picture looked as old as my dad."

"The dates mark not their births or deaths, but the years they presided," Miss Lovely answered. "Those were the pictures of the Heads of the estate; each and every one of them, someone very much like you."

This remark surprised Coraline the most out of every other that day, because it caused her mother to give the woman her most piercing glare yet.

And Miss Lovely triumphantly returned to her seat in the carriage, and as they returned to the Louvé, Coraline watched the blue setting sun disappear beyond the rim of the white and golden sky.

* * *

_AN: Well, now we've been nice and properly introduced to Lynwood Estate's previous masters. Some of them will be important in Coraline's story and weave in with the other stories going on (yay, foreshadowing!). Some of them will just be little extras included in this space the further the story goes along. All of them have a story of their own (which I may or may not write about in extras). If popular enough, I may include a _Tales from Lynwood Estate_ section, with just a little blurb on the different Heads of the Family. I may also do this with members of the Prenderghast family from the fictional family tree I made of them as well._

_Also, I'm tempted to just start cursing at all the repetitive naming in this family. I know they did that a lot back then, and so I did it to try to keep realism, but was it really necessary? Two Julias, two Ezekiels, two Edii (yes, that is the plural form of "Edius," because the name follows Latin roots and grammar laws). Let's just be thankful they got more original as time went on, shall we?_

_Coraline's fun to write, and her visual perspective is interesting, isn't it? _

_Fun fact: The Louvé was named after and inspired by a seasonally operated haunted house called _Love Manor_, whose name is entirely ironic. I saw pictures on the internet and fell in love (no pun intended). It actually had nothing to do with the _Louvre,_ a former French palace and current art museum, although the similarities tickled me, as the __Louvé actually is full of artifacts - given that the Throckmortons were historically a family of archaeologists (and before the 1970's, artifacts belonged to whoever found them)._

**Next Time: Aggie is a bad liar, and blueberry bushes truly hate her. **


	6. Stuk 5: Cemetery

Prenderghast Puzzle

Stuk 5: Grave Robbers

_January 14__th__, 2014 – Night_

"I don't like this," Salma repeated for the fifth time that night.

"We know." Replied Norman, voice monotone.

"I really don't like this. I feel like we're going to hit somebody's corpse."

"We _know._" Replied Neil, sounding just as noncommittal.

"Maybe we should just tell the town and the new caretaker can do the digging."

"And maybe you'll make friends with the HPS so they won't deliberately make everything harder for us."

Silence.

"I don't like this."

Norman huffed a groan, leaning on his shovel.

The three of them were all standing in or around a hole about three feet deep. Around them were tombstones and misshapen trees. Salma, camera in hand, was nervously tittering at the top of the hole with Neil next to her, while Norman took his turn at the actual digging.

"It's not like we're robbing anyone's grave, Salma," he huffed, throwing another shovelful of dirt out of the hole. "How were we supposed to know that the graveyard expanded so much?"

"Yeah," agreed Neil. "It's hard to imagine that the graveyard was ever smaller, you know? But I guess it makes sense." Neil nodded his head towards the direction of Mr. Prenderghast's old house, bubbly as ever even though it was nearly eleven at night. "I mean, I doubt anyone would build a house that close to the cemetery intentionally. Especially if Norman's family really built the house. They wouldn't get any sleep around here! Although," he said, eyes wide with realization, "Think of the awesome sleepovers!"

"Considering his Uncle's job, Neil," Salma answered in her typical bored drawl, a sign that at least some part of her was calming down, "I doubt the Prenderghasts built that house. Mr. Prenderghast probably moved in when he became the cemetery's caretaker."

Neil looked stupefied. "Oh. I hadn't thought about that."

Climbing out of the hole, Norman handed the shovel to Neil. "Your turn."

"Cool!" Neil exclaimed. "Do you think if we dig deep enough, we'll see more zombies?"

"No, Neil," Norman said, shaking his head. "I think we're done with zombies."

As Neil scrambled into the hole, Norman turned to Salma. "It makes sense to me if the Prenderghasts had lived up here. Except for Aggie and that guy by the Hopkins House, I've never run into any Prenderghast ghosts anywhere else."

"You mean 'The house _proclaiming_ itself to be the Hopkins House,'" Salma said, sniffing indignantly. "And I'm not saying it's not a possibility, but all Julia ever described their living quarters as is a little house near the edge of the forest with a large herb garden around it. There's no mention of any stable anywhere near them. If this 'Kenneth Prenderghast' really was Julia's contemporary and they lived up here so close to the stable, the stable would have been mentioned in her diary, and it would have been much easier finding out where it was."

"You still could've been a little nicer," Norman said. "Strong Wolf was helping us, it was lucky he even watched Kenneth bury the letters. Just because you can't hear him doesn't mean he can't hear you."

"If the living can be spoken ill of, why not the dead? And vice-versa, of course. I have no problems with saying what I think about someone whether or not I can see them; he was thoroughly disagreeable."

"You couldn't even hear him."

"But I could tell by your reactions. You do the same thing whenever your grandmother says something offensive about your sister; you told me so yourself. You pick and choose the words to repeat."

Norman was silenced by this, brooding over whether he was really that obvious or if Salma was just really smart. It was probably a combination, given his lack of social skills that were only _just_ improving.

"Do you think Sheriff Hooper will arrest us if she finds us digging in the graveyard?" he asked, changing the subject.

"Only after she checks to make sure there's not another round of zombies coming," came a reply from the pit.

"So you were eavesdropping, Neil?" Salma called down to him. "How very unbecoming."

"But you're not quiet at all! How was I supposed to know your conversation was private?" Neil popped his head out of the hole. His face was red from strain and splattered with mud in random places. From the looks of it he'd been itching his nose with a mud-covered finger.

Salma wrinkled her own nose in disgust. "Never mind, Neil. It's my turn now. Come on." Taking out and putting on a pair of rubber gloves, she reached a hand down into the pit and Neil almost pulled her in while trying to get up. Taking the shovel from him, she jumped into the hole.

"Aw man," Neil said to Norman, laughing, "I think I got mud in my underwear, dude."

And yet, Norman noticed, his pants were almost entirely dry. "How did you even _manage_ that?"

"You're not the only strange one here, Norman. I can do things you can't even imagine." Neil took the flashlight from its location at the side of the hole and held it up to his face, probably trying to look scary or dramatic. All it did was caused the beam from the light to shine through his flared nostrils and turn his nose red, the humorous effect completed by Neil bouncing his eyebrows up and down.

Norman laughed as Salma shouted from the hole, "What—Neil! I can't see!"

"Sorry!"

As Neil replaced the flashlight, Norman took his time looking down the hole they'd dug. "You two are good at this," he complimented. "It must be nearly six feet deep!"

"About the right depth to find a grave!" Neil proclaimed cheerfully. The shovel that came flying out of the hole would've hit him in the gut if he hadn't moved.

"_Salma no swiping!"_

"Shut up!"

"Sorry!" But Neil was still grinning as he passed the shovel back to her; Norman could tell he was enjoying taking advantage of one of the rare moments Salma was nervous. Salma took the shovel and gave a good stab into the dirt at the bottom of the hole.

_Thump_.

With both Norman and Neil watching, Salma froze.

Norman cheered. "Finally! Who would've thought Kenneth would bury them at funeral depth?"

"Or it could just be a coffin," Neil added, sidestepping the flying shovel entirely this time.

"How am I supposed to pull it out?" Salma enquired once the shovel was back in her hands again.

"Use the shovel for leverage," Norman suggested. Watching her proceed to struggle, he added, "Hold on, give it here."

Taking the shovel from her, he waited for her to get out of the hole. After a few seconds of failed attempts he and Neil were cackling with mirth.

"This. Isn't._ Funny!" _Salma shouted, jumping up and down and trying to dig into the soggy, half-frozen sides of the hole with her latex-covered fingers. _"Get me out of this hole!"_

"Sorry," Norman said, still chuckling. "Not very pleasant at night, are you Salma?" He reached down a hand and she took it.

"Just because you've grown like a freaking string bean…" he heard her grumble as he jumped into the hole.

As Norman hacked away at the dirt around the box, Neil asked, "Who's going to take it home?"

"I can't," said Norman from the pit, "If I come back looking like I've robbed the graveyard, my Dad'll flip shit."

"I can't, my mom just cleaned the hallway and she said the next time I play hockey in the mud she'll make me clean it myself. I can't imagine _what_ she'd do if I came back with a box that was buried in the graveyard."

Norman stopped digging and both boys looked at Salma. "What?" she queried. "You expect me to have an easier time? You _know_ I hate dirt spots on the carpet," she said, removing her rubber gloves and inspecting her meticulously clean hands. "It's obvious what we have to do with it. We hide it."

They both looked at each other, then, as if all of them were psychic instead of one, simultaneously looked at the ruined roof of Mr. Prenderghast's house at the edge of the graveyard.

* * *

_AN: It's the **true canon ship,** everybody: Salma x the Shovel (possible OT3: Salma x the Shovel x Victim Neil). Also, does it make me a horrible person if I truly wanted to see the kids doing creepy gothic things in a graveyard? Imagine Perry's face if Norman really did bring the box home XD._

_I totally forgot to mention ages before, didn't I? Weird. Norman's only twelve and a half here, Salma's a few months younger, and Neil's the oldest, only a month away from turning 13. They're in 7__th__ grade. _

_Also: I always imagined that when Norman finally got some confidence back, his natural sassiness would become more apparent. It's obvious he's a lovably snarky and sarcastic little brat, but it takes back seat in the movie to his incredible shyness—heck, it may also be a way for him to push aside obvious emotional pain. Either way, the way I see it, the more confident he gets, the more pronounced his rather dark sense of humor will be. _

_In other words, Teen Norman = Reserved, quiet teen with the inner workings of a minor troll (well, probably)._

_Sorry, no extra content this time. _

_Filling in the Hole's __**Interlude**__ is next—and things slowly begin to come together._


	7. Interlude: No Cigar

Prenderghast Puzzle

Interlude: No Cigar

There was no key.

If Mr. Prenderghast's house wasn't already a decrepit wreck, Salma would have felt much guiltier about kicking the nearest objects in her vicinity. Instead she would have sat down, made herself as small and contained as possible, and glared at everything as though she wished the place would burn. That was what she usually did when she was angry, anyways.

Instead, after kicking Norman and Neil out of the ruined house and having her little tantrum, she'd left the late caretaker's house and departed for home, leaving the chest behind her. To take her mind off the embarrassing fact that she hadn't foreseen the stupid trunk being _locked _(and the fact that the three of them didn't have the strength to break it open)_, _she went back to her up-and-coming hobby: investigating the mystery that was Coraline Jones and her annoyingly cryptic _everything._

Some might say her fixation was unhealthy—particularly when she spent the entire week following her procuration of the diary researching every facet she could about the girl, from birth records to music tastes. But Salma knew there was a chance of adding more validation to the diary's claims if only she could find it.

Coraline's maternal family came from England—the country in which she acquired the diary, according to her. Julia herself had moved away from Blithe Hollow after the witch trials. If the diary's claims held up to historical fact in every other setting, it would add that much more credence to its less agreeable claims.

Also, Salma was nosy.

Currently she'd found out a couple of interesting things: Coraline's grandmother had most likely used a false name when she moved to America, which explained why Salma couldn't find anything further about her. Salma'd had the brilliant idea to simply look up large estates in England that were currently undergoing legal works involving inheritance. Comparing the immigration record pictures of Coraline's grandmother and a young, twenty-something-year-old English noblewoman she'd seen by chance (on a page dedicated to a property titled _Lynwood Estate) _made it obvious that, with the exception of a couple years in age, the two were likely the same person, and if Salma was right, instead of Brooks, Coraline's grandmother's real last name was Throckmorton.

But that lead her directly to a dead end again: the Throckmortons had lived in England for centuries—if birth records and the often-faulty immigration records that survived from the early 20th century were accurate, Victoria Throckmorton was the first person from her direct family line to live outside of England. The only valuable new thing Salma had found was that Coraline's grandmother, Victoria, had not left her home in England, apparently, but instead _fled_ in the early 1940's. Online pdf archives of the _Thames Tribune_ claimed that the woman had been declared missing—only to turn up months later in the United States, deliberately fleeing authorities and disappearing again.

The article had caught her eye because, one, someone related to Coraline and from English nobility had run away from home for no apparent reason and, two, if Victoria was a grown woman seventy years ago (and she appeared to have been, for she was noted as married in the first article about her disappearance), it was strange that her daughter, Coraline's mother, appeared to be only thirty something years old. That would have placed Mel Jones' birth when Victoria was, what…. fifty? At the very least.

The site didn't give much in the way of further information; apparently no one in the Throckmorton family wished to give specific details as to why Victoria ran away, or even the circumstances of how, and the woman herself didn't seem to be very friendly with the media. It was noted that she had three children with her, but as minors, they were not named.

It was suspicious, but nothing above typical family drama. The children Victoria had already had could be Coraline's really, really old aunts or uncles. If Coraline's mother was born after the woman had left England, and the woman was rather older than the norm when Mel was born (however rare that situation actually was), then even the strangeness of how long ago the event was could be explained.

Scrolling down the page, she almost dismissed the rest as another useless result that had appeared in her (rather extensive, thank-you-very-much) investigation, when her eye caught the _Suggested Reading _section and her eyes narrowed at the first article on the list.

STATE-SIDE FAMILY MASSACRE: LADY THROCKMORTON OFFERS REWARD.

* * *

Norman couldn't figure his sister out anymore. Even before she and he had begun to get along, he knew enough about her to say with much certainty that she hated reading and anything that involved staying still and unobtrusive, which was fine by him because he liked both those things. And as much as he liked the change in their relationship, he was beginning to miss the solitude.

Having someone sitting behind him and reading over his shoulder in between text messages was decidedly unnerving.

"Um…" he began uncertainly.

Courtney, probably feeling he was ready to talk, looked up from her phone. "Gotten to any good parts yet?" she asked around a mouthful of pink bubblegum.

How should he put this? "Courtney, this book is about a tragedy that forced five people to flee their homes, twenty-three to be locked up, and one to lose her life." She visibly blanched, and he went on so as not to hurt her feelings. "I mean, I know you didn't mean it that way, but…"

"Yeah, yeah," she mumbled, looking down, "sorry."

Norman looked down at the book again, feeling bad for ruining her happy mood. She was just trying to start a conversation, after all.

"Um," he started again, "I haven't really gotten to the main part of the Trials, though… since you asked. I mean, according to this," he pointed to a particularly calligraphic paragraph, "there were near-misses for months before Aggie's trial. A bunch of people ran away to avoid being taken to court, and people were banding up and arguing in the streets and stuff."

"Sounds terrible," Courtney said, no longer sounding flippant about it. With even more discomfort, Norman realized she was probably thinking of the incident at Town Hall on the tercentennial.

"Yeah," he said. Then, trying to be brighter, he added, "But it's still interesting. I mean, now-a-days we forget why anything really happened, only that it happened. The town, they turned Aggie into this hideous monster, probably because that's what they've always been told. But they actually _believed _it because, well, what other reason could explain why their 'civilized' ancestors were driven to_ murder_?" He barely paused in between sentences. "But here, it mentions that there was this disease in the town just before the trials began. We didn't learn that in school. Julia, the girl who wrote this—she was a girl at the time, at least—lost three close relatives during it. She writes here," he again pointed to a bit of the paragraph, to a specific line, and showed it to his sister, "that she thinks her father, the Judge, was allowing the trials because he wanted answers to explain what happened to her mother."

"Her mother?" Courtney peered at the barely-legible handwriting. "Just her mother? That seems, like, _waaay _weirdly specific."

Norman went very, very quiet, and Courtney suddenly couldn't see his eyes.

"Her mother didn't die like the others," Norman said slowly. "Julia's sister and brother died from the plague. Her mother, Cecily, 'came down from the roof.' And to Judge Hopkins, I guess that made it worse."

* * *

_AN: I promised, didn't I? The stories have begun to connect._

**Next time is an Act 1 Update: **_**Aggie **_**is shocked with morbid conversation, and the blueberry bushes still hate her. **


	8. Stuk 6: Coraline

_It's best to take this chapter in pieces. It's a lot to read._

_Title: All Stuk titles have been common idioms; Bite Your Tongue is a reference to the fact that this is the only chapter without any kind of dialogue, due to the fact that it's half messed-up flashback and half Coraline's exploring, and she doesn't have Wybie to talk to._

_This is the last real 'exposition' chapter for Coraline. Much like her book, there's time spent with her just wandering around, exploring the place, which acts as exposition for the house. Her stuks are going to be picking up the pace after this._

* * *

Prenderghast Puzzle

Stuk 6: Bite Your Tongue

It was a memory, or maybe a dream, that Coraline didn't like to think about.

Her great-grandmother was lying in a bright room, smelling of lilacs and sick-scented health food and dust. The bed she was on, like the room itself, was full of sunny pastels; faint purples, iridescent blues, sunflower yellows and tangy oranges, and most of all pristine whites. Beyond those pastels were glows of gold. There was a window to her great-grandmother's right, Coraline's own left, a double-paned old fashion bay glass, and the window was open with outstretched arms welcoming the outside world with a loving embrace.

There was very little love being felt inside, though.

Coraline was tiny, and the world appeared huge and faded and strangely crisp at the edges in that way old childhood memories often do. She was wearing her old Sunday dress, as she was still in the time when she let her mother pick her clothes without complaint. White suspenders over a violet flower blouse held up a snowy pleated skirt that matched her purple socks and white Mary Janes, which she busied herself kicking and clacking together while she sat on her little stool—the only noise in the room for a brief time.

The memory was void of anything but that sound. All others had been blocked out long ago.

Grandma Victoria—another relation she never saw anymore—had taken the form of a hazy, blurry, half-remembered figure standing over the old woman in the bed. She was stock still, like everything else in the room except Coraline. Mel—Mommy, as she was known at the time—was standing a few feet from Coraline, on the opposite side of the bed from Grandma Victoria.

The memory played as if watched on a VCR, painstakingly viewing frame by frame without sound. It started quiet—and not just in sound, either, though she had preferred not to hear those long-ago voices. There was no movement. The room, the memory, was still as a photograph.

There was a silent twitch from the bed.

A muted jump from Grandma Victoria, and a muted scream, her face turning puce.

An equally muted jump from Mommy Mel, leaping away from the bed, from Coraline's great-grandmother's side.

A muted tug on Coraline's arm. A muted smashing of the bedside table. A muted Mommy Mel, running Coraline from the room, grasping at her hand tightly and fighting against her daughter's confused attempts to break free.

A silent passing of life, departing with a silent smile.

* * *

June 21st, 2013

Life in Louvé Manor passed strangely. There was nowhere to be, no times assigned to anything, even meals were taken at one's leisure—though Miss Lovely had been quick to say that this would soon change, once arrangements became more permanent, and should she truly consider inheriting, proper conduct would be one of the first things she'd have to learn. It was the first time in her trip to England that Coraline had truly felt intimidated.

Instead, Coraline had taken to wandering the halls. There were so many of them, vast and filled with gilded chairs and soft, fancy rugs, that she hadn't even gotten to the outside on her own yet. She was too preoccupied with exploring the inside.

Besides, she now had a lead on her mission.

On the first day of their arrival, after leaving the Crypt and proceeding with a very brief tour of the inside (it was getting to be dinner time), Coraline had been taken up to the room her great-grandmother had set up for her. It was whimsically decorated, but not childish, with a flowery effervescent sun with beams made of mirrors hanging on the wall, a chandelier made of delicately layered paper lace and warm yellow lights and knots resembling different animals, and glowing golden glass star prisms hanging from the ceiling to add a little bit of extra light.

The only problem was that the color scheme was white, which gave her the uncomfortable feeling of being examined, no matter how strangely modern and comfortable the room was decorated to be. Her attention was soon taken off of the color, though, when she woke up the next morning and spotted something she, in her late-night drowsiness, had missed.

A small little paper package, and a note, rested on the slim, stout bedside table. On it, in elegant cursive hand, was

_Coraline_

Never one to read cards before opening gifts, Coraline had unfolded the tiny paper package and out of a box rolled a small golden ball that was a beam of bright light.

Wincing at the brightness, she squinted against the glare and noticed it had strange carvings on it; there were pictures of birds, and strange people with feather headdresses, and a long, bent, broken curving pattern that was topped by the head of what looked like a dog. Pictograms, certainly, from the way they formed uniform patterns. A writing style, old—probably, from the pictures, Egyptian.

Coraline had heard stories of how her mother's family was into archeology—it was one of the few things her mother actually seemed somewhat comfortable with sharing—but she also knew that keeping artifacts was taboo for those that worked in the field. Hopefully, for her opinion of her great-grandmother's sake, it was fake, or a reproduction.

Looking for an explanation, Coraline had then unfolded the note.

_Dearest Coraline, _it read.

_You have no idea how happy it made me to finally meet my great-granddaughter, even if it may not have been for long. When you get to be as old as I, such a thing is a distant dream, especially when a family is as broken as ours. I can only hope that time has allowed people to heal, although I doubt it—time is an agent, not a catalyst. It helps only in combination with another helping factor._

_By now, perhaps, you have grown into a young adult—perhaps you're already a woman! And yet, I am not there to see it. But as sorry as I am to do it, even I and you must pass away into the agent of time, I to drop my burdens and depart, and you to pick up mine. For that I beg forgiveness—no matter when you read this or how I die, I most certainly will not have left my affairs in order._

_That burden I mention is that of this family. Which are two burdens, really: there is the secret, sacred duty given to all Throckmorton family heads, and then there is the wellbeing of the family itself. The second shattered under my watch, and I could not piece it together. _

_I hope that you may turn the burden I have unfortunately left you with into a source of happiness. Heaven knows this family could use a little of that. At least I hope you come to love what is around you as your home; I wish it would be yours as it once was mine: a source of great pride and joy with my accomplishments, my history, and yes, even, for a time, my family. It may also—if you are anything like me—become a source of fascination. These walls are practically alive with the most captivating of histories and secrets. _

_In case of other eyes, I cannot discuss with you your inheritance here. Know that I know you are suited to it, even if you question this yourself. Should you accept this burden I leave you with, Kyriaki will tell you everything she can. _

_May the skies sail with you,* _

_Your Nana Theo._

_That's right,_ Coraline had recalled. _I had called her Nana.*_

It was a vague memory, the old woman in white who had visited their home in Massachusetts when Coraline was young, only to die there. She knew she'd been very upset at the time by it. They'd moved almost immediately afterwards—Coraline had come to see this as proof that even her mother wasn't completely unaffected by that kind of tragedy, no matter how much she hated the woman.

Rereading the note again and eyeing the mentions of sacred duties and broken families, she could certainly agree with her Nana on one thing: Lynwood Estate seemed crawling with secrets. And regardless for whether it was a good thing or bad, when it came to secrets, Coraline had always had a talent for ferreting them out.*

Her grandmother had become her clue in the two days following. Her mother's dislike seemed to center around the woman, so any information on the previous family head would be useful.

And it was easy to explore the Louvé. She greeted maids and janitors, or whatever one called for their privately employed counterparts, when passing large rooms and hallways, but for the most part the enormous mansion was empty of people. Miss Lovely and her mother were both out for the greater part of each day managing finances with the British lawyer whom Coraline had learned of the Louvé from back on the Pink Palace's porch, and while Coraline at times regretted being unable to see the undoubtedly borderline-violent discussion between the two women (whose dislike for each other seemed both mutual and boundless), she had plenty of exciting—if a tad lonely—work to attend to, and the absence of people made it easier.

The first tour of the interior of the manor was nearly worthless, as Coraline had been so dead tired from the plane trip, long drive and tour of the grounds that she could hardly remember most of it. The first full day had consisted of a better one, or at least, and easier-to-remember one, but it did not satisfy her natural curiosity, as Miss Lovely had noticeably skirted several rooms, so the teenager spent the 21st of June—her first day alone in the manor (without her scowling mother or the graceful Miss Lovely following her steps)—darting between corridors and doorways, trying to get a better look at everything and take mental notes so she could better explain the house to Wybie when she called him later that day (if she called him any earlier, he'd complain about being woken up early. Purley-on-Thames was eight hours ahead of Ashland—stupid time zones).

She began her survey on the first floor—apparently Europeans called the first floor she knew the "ground floor"—which was where her room was. There were many, many hints to the weirdness of her mother's family there, so it was a good first choice.

The room Coraline had been given had once been one of the several guest bedrooms on the floor. On her second, more memorable tour, Miss Lovely had said the guest rooms in the house had been for visiting nobility during earlier times and visiting family after the guest houses had been built. Coraline's room had been renovated especially for her before her Nana had died—which, though Coraline had never commented on it to Miss Lovely, seemed to imply the woman had decided Coraline would inherit the manor before they'd even met, as she couldn't remember ever meeting the woman before her deathbed visit.

Outside of her bedroom was the Master's Hall, a large, cross-shaped chamber that connected every bedroom and most hallways on the floor together. Miss Lovely had also referred to it as the Mahogany or Family Library, because it was filled with the personal texts of the Throckmorton clan, and it marked, according to her, the beginning of areas of the house guests were not typically allowed in (as the area had once been guest bedrooms, this made Coraline suspicious: were the Guest Houses built to remove the presence of guests totally from this floor? What was there to hide?). Coraline thought the texts sounded promising in terms of her search, but hated the thought of sitting still for so long, so she contented herself with the promise that she would return after fully familiarizing herself with the rest of the estate.

Branching off from the hall, excluding the bedrooms and the doorway to the grand entrance hall, were small, perfectly symmetrical antechambers leading to even more rooms; the former mistress' dressing room, the Gallery, the study, the two-floor Birchwood Library, and a room called the Artifact Restoration Room which had formerly been sleeping quarters but had been converted by Nana Theo in her younger years into a kind of archeological dark room (Coraline had spent nearly a half hour unsuccessfully trying to peer into an old-fashioned key hole; the room had been left locked).

Both the ground floor and the second floor could be reached with the most ease by leaving the centerpiece door in the Master's Hall for the first floor landing of the Entrance Hall, a two-story room consisting mostly of a dramatic grand staircase between the ground and first floor, a secondary staircase between the first and second, and many, many doors. It was matched with a room directly behind it, the Back Hall, which lead out to the deck and gardens.

To the left of the entrance and back halls, half the ground floor consisted of three giant rooms; the dining hall, the ballroom, and a sprawling loggia—one of the domed, circular protrusions Coraline had seen from the outside when she and her mother had first arrived. To the right, contrasting the simple, wide rooms of the other side, was a long, straight hallway with weaving, maze-like branches streaking off of it in strange places, leading to rooms like the great room, the lower parlor, the kitchen, the game room, and the "informal" (but still exceptionally classy) dining room. At the end of the hall was the Conservatory, the greenhouse-like sister dome of the Loggia.

Off the Back Hall was a room concealing a staircase to the basement, a floor Coraline found especially strange. Unlike the ground or first floors, which were both the same size, the basement was tiny and didn't seem to line up with the rest of the house. Miss Lovely had previously explained that the Louvé had been built over the foundation of a chapel destroyed in the same earthquake that had ruined the original manor on the estate, but that didn't explain why the manor was built in such a strange position over it.

The stairs downward lead directly to a basement hall, with doors diverging off into the Gentlemen's room* (a kind of lounge of the man of the house and his friends,) a secondary kitchen area, a wine cellar, a storage room, a wash room, and an underground pool. The Gentlemen's room was easily the largest room on the floor, with stone pillars rising in arches from the ground in church-like rows. The whole floor was maybe the size of the first floor of the Pink Palace's flat, which wasn't really tiny unless compared to the grand size of every other floor in the Louvé.

Going the other way, up from the Entrance Hall to the second floor, was a place more suited to servants. Half the floor was taken up by rooms designated to them in antiquity, including three servants' quarters, a governess' room, the servants' washroom and kitchenette, the Head of Staff's room, a sick room, a medical closet, and a disused sewing room, all connected by a hallway Miss Lovely referred to as the servant's passage. There were also rooms for the family of the estate, like a nursery, a rarely-used lounge, a waiting room and office, and the second level of Birchwood Library, but they were far fewer and kept separate from the servants' rooms.

It was here that Coraline found a door she hadn't noticed, one that Miss Lovely hadn't pointed out or entered on their earlier tours. Connected to the Head of Estate's office (which supposedly would someday be hers, so she felt she had every right to search it) was another room, probably standing right over the study on the floor below, which had a never-mentioned staircase leading upwards. And that was where Coraline's self-guided survey almost ended.

There was more to the house, certainly—she was standing in a large room, yes, one shining and larger than even the ballroom, but still not as large as the entire floor should have been. There was even a hallway at the very end, doors rimming one side of the slightly glowing chamber—but they were all inaccessible, locked. The room was not in ruin, per say, but the entire floor had an abandoned look about the place.

She took to the hallway at the end anyways, peering into each door's even more outdated keyhole as she passed. One of them, just a quick jog down the equally barren hallway, even had a window, but though she could have sworn she saw the form of something far off behind the glass, it was far too bright inside to see anything distinct.

Eventually her efforts paid off: one door, all the way in the opposite corner of the floor from where she was pretty sure she entered, was unlocked, though the door did not open easily due to lack of use.

Inside was a room that resembled the study downstairs. It was brighter; the whole room and everything in it seemed to glow like the sun, and Coraline was immediately drawn to the star-painted ceiling, a deep, shifting violet blue. Unlike the rest of the strange floor, this room was cluttered with everything Coraline had ever imagined could be in a mysterious, relatively empty manor. There was a dark red wooden desk covered with leather-bound books, a set of scales, a candelabrum, an ink bottle, and a glass ampule filled with dry flowers. A cage and bird perch stood next to the desk, empty and clean barring dust but clearly old, and strange, mismatched chairs—a comfy-looking red velvet armchair with a gold-embroidered coat of arms stitched in it and a hard, hand-carved, tall-backed throne—sat off in a corner next to each other. A scarred, padlocked wooden trunk lay on the floor next to a stool and a standing telescope pointing at nothing. A globe stand, covered in a fine layer of dust, blocked Coraline's view of what looked like a tall shelf containing strange glass bottles, all filled with liquids of even stranger colors. In the center, towards the back, silhouetted against dim, yellowing glass windows under dust, was an old set of stairs spiraling around a single metal beam, leading high up into what seemed to be one of the turrets she'd seen from the outside.

The room was clearly disused, even abandoned. Perhaps the whole floor. The fact that most of the doors were locked and this room was dusty indicated that nobody came up here, and they probably weren't allowed—not even to clean.

Maybe she should ask if they could unlock them, or give her the keys? The place was supposed to be hers, after all. (Well, when she turned 16, it would be. It was strange to think about.)

Then again, if she asked it would draw attention to the fact that she had, indeed, been up here. And if she wasn't supposed to (yet, at least)—which was likely, given that Miss Lovely had completely _forgotten_ to acknowledge there was an entire other floor—she'd be watched that much closer if she tried to come up here again.

And people didn't keep things hidden for no reason. She knew that well enough. It was discovering those reasons that was the real challenge, the bigger secret inside a secret.

But if this was to become something of a secret base of operations, she realized, suddenly unhappy, then she would have to do the cleaning herself.

Right after she called Wybie…

(Unbeknownst to her, as she left the room, the door locked behind her).

* * *

_AN: Puts off reading to search the house, puts off cleaning to call Wybie. Cor's a girl after my own heart with her talent at procrastination! _

_This has a bit more development on dear old Nana Theo, and of course, more on the mystery of the Throckmorton family and Lynwood Estate. I apologize for the lack of dialogue in this Stuk, but Coraline's not going to just walk around talking to herself… usually… (that's why Wybie was added in the movie, after all). _

_I also apologize for those who get bored of insipid detailing of old houses, however, much of the Throckmorton family's true character can be gleaned from these details, so I think they bare mention. Some of them will be discussed in-story, and some will not. I like leaving some of the mystery—old houses have mystique because there's always some you know, and some you don't. And I adore old houses._

_*"May the skies sail with you" is a strange signature I had been thinking of giving Nana Theo for a while. It's a little hint on her character and her interests—though a bigger hint was already given—which I'll explain later when more about her is revealed._

_*There's always a problem when it comes to differentiating different generations in a family, especially for young children. We can't exactly expect toddlers to go around calling their elders "Great-Great-Uncle" and "Great-Grandmother" and things like that. We have simpler things for grandmothers—grandma, meemaw, grannie, etc. But none for great-grandmothers; at least, none that I'm aware of. My family actually had this problem when I was little; I was fortunate enough to have met two of my great-grandmothers before they passed. I knew one as "Great-Oma," but knew her for such a short time that the hard-to-then-say word hardly mattered, because I never addressed her usually, just stayed quiet at her bedside. For the one that lived longer—a lot longer (102!)—we had "Nana."_

_*Another shout out to the source material for Theo Throckmorton—this one to the back cover one-liner from book one. _

**Challenge! Something's off about the basement, even more so than its size or shape – something so off, it would appall any visitors who stayed in the manor during its hayday. Can you guess what's so odd about the Gentlemen's Room? For that matter, what's equally odd about the second floor?**

**Also, Next Update is Act 1: Agatha Prenderghast meets the Honorable Judge, and Julia has a panic attack. Not surprising, really…**


	9. Stuk 7: Norman

Stuk 7: Under the Bridge

January 17th, 2014

Norman never realized how little he knew about his mother.

He knew personal things and some childhood stories about his dad; it was one of the perks of having an invisible grandmother only he could talk to. Perry Babcock liked baseball (so much so, he'd signed Norman up for it two years in a row before letting him quit), do-it-yourself work around the house (that he always swore he would never do again each time), and cooking (though Norman's mother did most of it behind his back to make him feel better). He'd once set fire to Grandma Babcock's kitchen when he was seven and first learning, and according to her, some things never change.

His mom liked gardening, public service, and Chihuahuas, though his dad would never, _ever_ let one in the house. She collected memorial teddy bears and kept them in a basket underneath the clothing rack in her closet, each one wearing things like Navy uniforms and astronaut suits. She was always, always trying to become interested in something her kids did, whether it was Courtney's cheerleading or Norman's zombie movie marathons in the living room.

But he never really knew much more than that. There was _history_ in their family; a very obvious line of it, but he only really knew a fraction of some part of the beginning and the very tail end, where he was in the present.

Salma kept reminding him of it constantly—it was _his_ responsibility, _his_ history. _He_ was the one with Prenderghast blood, never mind the fact that he only knew two—well, now three—members of that family like him and nothing much about them at all.

He'd asked many times after the tercentennial whenever he caught his mother alone—though he'd usually find Courtney nearby, pressing her ear against the door—if she could tell him anything about her family. What was her childhood like? His grandparents? Where did they live? Unfortunately, she responded by clamming up faster than most species of shellfish and directing her attention to the unfinished laundry/dinner/Ladies of Spring* meeting plans.

Norman had to admit—Julia's diary helped. But it was only one year, and only a couple months of that year, and only a couple of days within those months that the book's author had been able to spend any time at all with his ancestors—and even then, she was limited to whatever they were willing to share with her. And before and after her were hundreds of years of total blanks nobody was willing to share with him.

(He'd gone back to ask Kenneth, who himself had gone back to being completely silent, and that combined with the presence of the silent, wraith-like Prenderghast ghosts around his uncle's house made it seem as though God himself only allowed Norman contact with members of his family that either didn't know anything or wouldn't talk.)

So that Friday afternoon found Norman staunchly ignoring his current problems by drowning his life out with copious amounts of faux horror B-movies. He'd been planning to watch with Neil, but his friend was stuck in detention after trading aerobics DVDs with Alvin when he should have been watching his Bunsen burner. And Salma had thought _Norman_ would be a bad influence on Neil.*

His cell phone rang, and, pausing the movie on a shot of a woman screaming in terror (at either the werewolf-zombie hybrid that was supposed to be in the shot or what appeared to be unedited reflections of the director's chair offset), he glanced down at the caller ID. _Salma_.

"Speak of the Devil" was becoming far too overused, but it _was_ an apt description of her sometimes.

He flipped open his phone. "Hi?"

"_Norman! I've calculated the probability of my hypothesis being an accurate and likely connection between Coraline Jones and diary, and the figures have been rechecked several times indicating that there is a strong likelihood that Coraline Jones has a possibility of being related to Demetrio Coel Addams-Blake!"_

There were many instances in which Salma could make him feel stupid, but rarely did they make him draw a complete blank. Norman rubbed his eyes, blinking away the spots that had appeared during his hour-long fixation with the TV screen. _Never a normal phone call._ "Who?"

"_Demetrio Coel Addams-Blake! He was the proprietor of a bed and breakfast here in Blithe Hollow up until the spring of 1984. Honestly, the place just passed to a new, anonymous owner—it's in the paper! Don't you read it?"_

"My dad does, and whenever he sees something he doesn't like he crumples it beyond repair, so I'll take your word for it. One problem: what does that have to do with Coraline _or_ the diary?"

"_I was _getting_ to that. Look, I found an article online about how Addams-Blake died in 2001 in some retirement home near here, and how his house was put back under the care of the original owner under the terms of the house's contract. Coraline's great-grandmother died when she was four, right? That puts her death in 2003. And all that the woman owned was willed to Coraline. This website online I found lists all the estates owned by old noble families of England, and, well, it hasn't been updated in a while, but Coraline's great-grandmother, Theodosia Throckmorton, built a house in Blithe Hollow—I say a house, but it was really a small mansion—after she traced her runaway daughter to this town back in the forties. Her daughter rejected it, so she let some cousins of hers who lived in the US use it instead. The website doesn't give an exact address—there are probably laws or something against that, I haven't checked international laws regarding privacy and property—but while there are several properties near our town that may be considered the size of small mansions, it was pretty easy to identify Addams-Blake's former bed and breakfast as the one, since the papers have just found out it was _just _claimed by a new inheritor. Because this successor is being kept anonymous, it's obvious that they've either got a lot of influence over the _Bugle _or they're a minor, and if it's the latter, it's most likely Coraline. And since his house was in Blithe Hollow, that's a connection between Coraline and this town that might've led to Julia Hopkins' journal ending up on her property in England."_

She seemed to say all of this as though she would forget the lines in her script if she slowed down. Winded himself just from listening, Norman's mind only really caught the beginning of her rant and the end.

"And why are you so certain it's this guy's house?"

Surprisingly, there was a pause. _"You're not going to like this, but it does make the likelihood of her being connected to Blithe Hollow even stronger. Coraline's grandmother—the one who was intended to own the house? Her married name was Conway."_

Salma wasn't entirely surprised when she heard Norman swear over the line.*

* * *

_AN: And Salma phones in on the Plot Line. _

_It feels kind of weird, writing so much about people and their mothers and ignoring their fathers. But Norman's ghost-seeing abilities come from his mother's side, so that couldn't be helped, and I chose Coraline's mother's side of the family instead of her father's because her mother is the one she's constantly in conflict with, and in the book it's the only side of the family we're given information about. Besides, it's hard to see Charlie Jones hiding anything from his daughter—he's so honest, even his double in the Other World couldn't lie to her. So that's two mother-child conflicts right there. Then Aggie specifically mentions her mother as the person she remembered as loving her, making her the only canon member of the Witch Trial-era villagers with a confirmed positive relationship with her. I tried to balance it out with the Judge, but… eh. On the other hand, Actual Crotchety Old Man Hopkins kind of reminds me of my grandfather. *laughs*_

_*The Ladies of Spring are a small group of activist amateur gardeners that weed the public gardens on the Blithe Hollow green around town hall and are noted in the Blithe Hollow Bugle to be cleaning local areas of moss. Norman's mom is their president. _

_*Once again, according to Blithe Hollows newspapers, Salma kind of originally hated Norman for Neil wanting to be his friend, because Neil was her only friend at the time. Also, she thought he was crazy, and that hanging out with him would get Neil beat up more. This isn't really resolved by the end of the movie, but isn't even a thing in the book, so I assume movie-Salma got over it. _

_*Norman never knew that the official name of the Conway House was formerly Addams-Blake's Bed and Breakfast, so he didn't realize which house they were talking about until Salma used the name Conway. And as for why Salma said Norman 'wouldn't like this,' well… Norman's got _history_ with that house. _

**Next Time: Coraline flips out, and an entire chapter is devoted to texting and geek Why-Were-You-Borns. **


	10. Stuk 8: Coraline

Prenderghast Puzzle

Stuk 8: Mind Your Head

* * *

_April 8__th__, 1936_

_Victoria has calmed down since last night's screaming fit, and little Melina has been removed from her care. I shudder to think what could be wrong with her; she seems to think the child has stolen something. The scissors, as well as all silverware and sharp objects, have been removed from her room as a precaution. _

_My poor son-in-law remains in shock at her wife's behavior. We all are, truly. I had known she was rebellious—she has been off since she was told she couldn't inherit—but this is something deeper. I do not wish to see her incarcerated for madness, but I see the gleam in her eyes. _

_Henry in particular is looking further._

* * *

_December 18__th__, 1941_

_She did not take our advice well. Henry was pushed down the stairwell last night, and has yet to come to. Victoria is threatening to divorce Joshua, but she's shouting such lunacies that I can scarcely believe anyone would take her seriously. Melina and Josephine are with David in the nursery; I think the girls are still worried for his health. David has been healing well from her attack, but the early infection still sends Melina in particular into sobbing hysterics. Bless those girls—they received all the heart their mother missed._

_If Victoria does not like the idea of a sanatorium, I certainly couldn't hope to believe she'd react to Henry's notes well. Luckily, she's only torn apart the library—the servants are keeping a watch on the doors, and it doesn't seem like she's thought to check the Observatory._

* * *

Coraline had isolated these two entries—the ones that alarmed her the most—taken their pictures, and texted them to Wybie. Underneath the pictures, Coraline sent him: **'1936? scissors? sanatorium? WHAT?'**

Wybie didn't get back until two hours later, which Coraline spent frantically searching the book for any evidence to counter her growing disturbia. _**'Sorry, out for Sunday breakfast with grandma's knitting club. Geeze, sounds like heavy stuff. What are these?'**_

'**pieces from my nanas logs.'**

'_**Yeesh, creepy much?'**_

Coraline didn't respond to that, so Wybie texted again: _**'So what am I supposed to do with these?'**_

Coraline spent a lot of time wondering that exact thing. **'i just need you to talk i cant think straight.'**

'_**Umm… ok, so, Victoria's your grandma's name, right?'**_

'**yup.'**

'_**So she's crazy.'**_

'**apparently. make a joke. i dare you.'**

The next text was a bit delayed. _**'Of course I wouldn't do that.'**_

Coraline practically snorted. She was about to reply, but received another text. _**'How old is your mom!?'**_

'**finally got there.'**

'_**I'm serious! That's crazy!'**_

'**and weve *already* been *there.*'**

'_**No, this is seriously crazy! your mom should be ancient!'**_

_Wow,_ thought Coraline. _Wybie's messing up his perfect grammar streak._ This must've really unnerved him, then.

'**thats not the only weird thing.'**

'_**But it is the weirdest! Your mom's like a freaking highlander!'**_

Not wanting to respond—and not knowing how—Coraline stared at the keys on her phone, trying to decide what to type, until Wybie beat her too it.

'_**Sounds like there's something in the observatory, then. Those *notes*.'**_

Ah, so Wybie finally learned when to take a hint when Coraline didn't want to talk about something. **'i thought so too.'**

'_**And "she has been off since she was told she couldn't inherit." So what, did she have a brother or something? They usually got preference over girls back then.'**_

'**none that i can find. i found a tapestry with a family tree on it in this room in the attic but its got moth holes all over it. her book doesnt mention any though.'**

'_**Maybe it's like what's happening with you and your mom.'**_Wybie had found it fascinating, the fact that the Coraline's Nana's will was skipping both her daughter and granddaughter. Since Coraline had broken the news to him, he'd been googling all sorts of inheritance laws and traditions, new and old. So far he'd found nothing.

'**you think she couldnt inherit back then for the same reason my mom cant now?'**

'_**It'd make sense. I just thought it was because your great-grandmother hated them, but this makes it sound like she was unqualified or something. I'd check the Observatory for whatever this 'Henry' left first, though.'**_

'**nana theo wrote me a letter. i found it on my bed.'**

'_**What? And you didn't tell me?'**_

'**i couldnt get anything from it except more stupidly vague phrases. but she did say that I was 'suited to inheriting' or something like that and she used inheritance and 'sacred duty' like they were the same thing.'**

Coraline leafed through the papers in front of her; there were few tables in the Master's Hall, and she was covering the entirety of one with books.

'_**Anything else you haven't told me?'**_

'**there was a little golden ball with the letter hanging from a lanyard. i think it was egyptian. im not wearing it because it was so bright it hurt.'**

'_**Oh, are your eyes acting up again?'**_

'**define acting up. theyre always like that now. and no before you tell me to: i am not taking the eye drops. they make my eyes itch.'**

'_**Fine, fine, I won't lecture you about proper bodily health. Don't blame me when you go blind. Just, when you get to the observatory, if you can still see, could you send me some pictures of whatever you find? And that family tree. Oh, and that golden ball if you can, I might be able to identify it. Better yet, just email me everything.'**_

'**whatever why-born.'**

* * *

_AN: Yeah, so, Coraline has an eye condition. She's not _colorblind,_ per say, but her eyes don't register darkness and light like ours. This has pretty much been foreshadowed since Coraline's stuks began—special mention goes out to the carriage ride, in which Coraline describes the Sun as blue and the sky as white/gold; this was pretty much the most obvious hint, but not by any means the only one. Her mother got her treated for this eye problem when she was younger, and the good doctor immediately identified the problem, and now she's rebelling against the meds because (take it from someone with ADHD) meds suck. Always. _

_I got the idea from the interesting use of light in Coraline: certain backgrounds and things, particularly in the Other World, interacted with light and color in strange ways: the raw void made of unshaped world that Coraline walks into with the cat is pure, pure white and glowing, the walls when the wallpaper peels glow green, the room behind the mirror that should be total darkness glows itself, even without the ghost children, the tool she's given to find the souls doesn't make the ghost eyes glow—they do that without it—but instead mute every other glowing thing into grey, and whenever she's in the real world and the door to the Other World is open, the house takes on weird colors and the sky turns to a purple swirling void. I get that this was because it's the other world, but it's fun to play around with the idea of unreliable visuals from a protagonist._

**Next Time: Two Interludes - a second in Act 3, and a first in Act 1, to end the day.**


	11. Intermission: Monster Mash

Intermission: Monster Mash

April 16th, 1984

The house was quiet.

Demetrio was used to that. He was almost sixty years old, quiet and slow himself now, and he was living with his aging wife and taking care of his already-aged parents.

But this was, for lack of more original phrasing, _too_ quiet.

And, sitting in the bottom of the linen cupboard with towels and pillow cases piled over his form, fingers fumbling for the phone he had dropped somewhere near the bed sheets as quietly as possible, he knew why.

His wife, Aria, was upstairs in her walk-in closet, hidden hours ago to prevent alarm. Uncle Danny was still in the piano room, now and forever fixed on his music. He probably hadn't noticed anything.

There was a monster prowling the house.

Eyes seized on the crack under the door, still trying to find his phone with his fingers, he searched for any sign of movement. Success—his phone!

He pulled out the large, clunky cordless and dialed, burying his slick red hands under the sheets to muffle the beeping while he did so. He waited for it to connect and then, not even risking the noise for a response, hung up.

Somehow, he fell unconscious, and only awoke when the officers had found him in the closet and pulled him out and onto the stretcher. Regaining consciousness, he could just make out three other stretchers, all with sheets draped over their faces.

So the monster had escaped.

And the Conway House would remain empty for another thirty years.

* * *

_AN: Short, short, short! But important without giving too much away. And a return to the Conway House from the prologue! New clues abound, but just more questions for you to think on! What is this monster? Who was the girl and the woman exploring the Conway House in the prologue and why were they there? (Okay, _that_ one might be a bit easier to figure out by now). _

_Why am I asking you? I want to know what you think! The first section comes spinning to a close with questions abound!_

_(I'm having so much fun screwing with you guys)._

_Feel free to tell me your thoughts and theories!_


	12. Stuk 9: Norman

_This is a surprisingly long chapter! Yikes._

* * *

Prenderghast Puzzle

Stuk 9: Killed the Cat*

Everybody knew about the Conway House. Well, they knew it existed, but they didn't really know much _about _it. In fact, Norman liked to think he knew more than most, considering he spent nearly all of his childhood avoiding it.

The house was considered by residents of Blithe Hollow to be the biggest stain on the town's history—and that was an impressive feat, considering said town thrived off the time-bleached murder of a small child. And for a period Blithe Hollow did business as usual on the House, stirring up the drama of tragedy, relishing in the national attention. But the town quickly lost its good humor when it learned that the culprit was probably among them, waiting to strike again.

The tragedy in the Conway House was shrouded in myth, hidden behind the fantastical and inaccurate rumors the _Blithe Hollow Bugle _had printed during the investigation and what little parents were willing to tell their children at the time. It had been in the mid-eighties, the middle of Spring, and there was no sign at all that something was amiss in the town, but the next morning one of the most prominent places to stay had been eliminated. Not even the guests had been spared.

Norman's thirteen-year-old self hadn't known the family called Addams-Blake. He probably should have, but he had trouble remembering names when they didn't concern him, let alone when he was trying to avoid him.

It wasn't as though the ghosts of the Conway House made him uncomfortable like they did when he usually avoided a place (like with Kenneth). That wasn't the case—that was impossible, actually, as there _were_ no ghosts in the Conway House. Perhaps his Uncle Prenderghast had helped them move on or perhaps they hadn't stayed behind at all, but it certainly wasn't _ghosts_ that lurked in the house.

There was something else, instead.

He'd been six, and it'd been before the other children had figured out that their parents thought talking to oneself was wrong. A quarter of them still had imaginary friends—there was no big deal if Norman was a little more or less creative with his.

He, and a boy named Walter, and an older boy named Reggie, and two girls whose names Norman couldn't remember, had been waiting for the bus to pick them up at the corner a block behind Norman's own house. As far as Norman could remember, the conversation had begun a little like this:

"You see that gate, over there?" Reggie the Fourth Grader had asked, and he'd pointed across from them to a gate so entirely integrated with plant life it was barely visible. The spikes of the gate were black iron, a sight not unusual in Pilgrim Town Blithe Hollow. "There's a huge mansion over there, behind that gate. My brother—" and Reggie was always mentioning his brother, the hulking sophomore pre-injury quarterback that he was then—"says that there's a person in there who kills people!"

And of course, this had received the typical childhood response.

"Nu-_uh_," Walter had said, rolling his eyes to show he wasn't even a bit taken in by the older boy. Two other children at the bus stop, both girls, had stopped talking to each other and had gone quiet.

Seeing his audience had increased, the fourth grader had replied: "Yah_-huh! _They've killed…everyone who's ever lived in there! Chopped them to bits! And the person who did it still lives there!"

"They wouldn't still live there," one of the two girls, a fifth grader, cut in. "If the police knew where someone that dangerous was, they'd go get him and lock him up. Her dad's a police man," she gestured to the girl next to her, "he's told me so before."

"Then you've asked about the house! Tell them!" Reggie gestured to Norman and Walter, the former keeping quiet and the latter staring and hanging on to the girl's every word.

The girls looked at each other and the other one shrugged, going back to her book. "I dunno about the house," admitted the first, "just that they'd never let a murder suspect go free if they knew where he was—it's against _conduct_, or something."

"But-but… but there is! There really is a murderer there!" Reggie howled, and Norman had realized in hindsight that he was trying to look outraged at someone calling his bluff. "Hey—Norman talks to dead people, right?"

And that was where everything went downhill.

"Oh _yeah,_" said the second girl—Ester, that was her name—and Norman thought she might've been Walter's older sister. "Reg, leave the kid alone. I seem to remember that you used to talk to Mr. Wuzzy-Fuppkins until the summer of third grade."

"No, seriously! I heard his sister talking about it! She said her parents were getting all worried and stuff for him because he kept saying he saw their neighbor walking his dog, and they both got run over by a car or something last month! Right, dude?"

At being addressed, Norman did the usual: kept silent. Which, while being a good self-preservation method usually, didn't help him in this situation.

"C'mon," Reggie said, "I can prove it to you! The bus doesn't come for another ten minutes, I say we go over and just take a look. It's a crime scene; there'll be chalk outlines and blood and stuff if it's real. If nothing weird happens, we'll come back."

"I'd like to think we'd come back no matter what," said the first girl.

Reggie brushed her off. "Then you can stay here; Norman's used to seeing dead people. He'll go with me."

Norman had remained quiet, although he remembered his face had paled.

The second girl, Ester, seemed outraged at the thought, and finally shut her book. "You are _not_ dragging a little kid in there!"

"It's not like it'll bother him! Kid's messed up enough anyways."

"Coming from you, Mr. Wuzzy-Fuppkins!"

"Coming from _you_, Ms. My-Dad's-a-Please-Man! Mom's always going on about him and '_Ms. Nextdoor.'_"

Norman hadn't understood exactly what Reggie had been talking about then, but he did now, and he understood why the girl had gotten so angry, and why Walter had looked down at the ground.

"Why you—you—!" She'd actually grabbed his shirt cuff. "There is NO murderer in there. My DAD said so! And I'll prove it!"

She dragged his arm by the sleeve until he wrenched out of it.

"I'm comin', I'm comin'!"

As she crossed the street, indignant nose in the air, the older boy turned, grinning, to Walter and Norman. "Come on!"

And when the bus came eight minutes later, a tearful, single girl was the only one to get on.

* * *

Norman's first time exploring an abandoned house in search of ghosts—while certainly not his last—was the only one in his memory where he actually found none. He'd often gone looking for others' departed loved ones and found the wrong spirits, or visited sites where misfortune occurred to become acquainted to new members of the ever-growing population only he could see, but with the exception of when all the ghosts fled from Aggie during the Tercentennial, there was almost never a _complete_ absence of them.

The Conway House was the 'almost.'

The appearance of the house made up for its distinct lack of ghosts when it came to what would scare small children. It hadn't changed, physically; the house itself had so far been handling its abandonment quite well. Its towers loomed over them, majestic and gothic in the pink fuzz of early morning dewlight. There were a few places where graffiti had been left, on doors and on windows, and some broken glass panes, but the damage on the outside appeared minimal.

That wasn't a comfort, though, to the children who were going inside.

"See anything yet?" Reggie asked, for some reason in a whisper.

Norman had followed him up to the stone steps of the front porch, Walter trailing after, and pawed at the dewy, overgrown weeds at his foot, quietly shaking his head.

"Reggie, I told you to leave him alone!" Ah, Norman remembered. Ester had been all the way to the stone front porch of the place and slipped in a side window before she'd turned around to look for Reggie. Ester hadn't known Reggie had brought Norman or Walter, and he hadn't wanted her to. Too bad. "You actually _brought_ them? Are you nuts!?"

"Hey—we need the kid! And your little bro tagged on his own!"

"We do _not_ need him here! And what if there really is a murderer here? You've just brought two little kids!"

Ester was known, Norman remembered, for her violent temper, and Reggie was honestly lucky there was brick and mortar between them. Stupidly, however, Reggie slipped in the window himself, and, even more stupidly, Norman followed. It was nice to think one was needed.

They had crawled through a window into what seemed to be a giant foyer. A tall desk was against the wall on the other side of the room, and on the wall behind it, a key box. There was an old leather and wood chest, buckled and bolted shut, right next to Norman where he entered; it was lying at the foot of an ascending staircase that hugged the right wall. Rubble covered the floor. Plaster, wood planks, and chunks of cement and marble littered the floor in large piles. Their view of the second floor landing was unobstructed, because the railing had collapsed in places. A shattered lamp had fallen from above and was now in pieces at the foot of an ancient pendulum clock.

Norman had turned around to help Walter, who was shorter than he was and having trouble getting through the window, just as Reggie and Ester started speaking again, stepping carefully over the remaining shards of what had once been a glass-inlaid table.

"This doesn't look abandoned…" Reggie said, grinning pointedly at Ester.

"It _looks_ _ransacked_," she returned, equally pointed in her tone.

"It's _awesome_ in here," Walter interrupted, not hearing him. He scrambled out of the window, looked around, and took a seat in a carved wooden chair with swan figurines for arms.

Reggie clapped his hands as he and Ester came closer to the two younger children. "Alright, where do we go first? I claim the upstairs," he added proudly. "There's three doors down here, so we can each—"

"You'd better not be suggesting we split up," Ester interrupted threateningly. "Reggie, there's nobody here. We have to get back to the bus."

"Oh, come on! It's only—" Reggie looked down at his watch, then made a face. "—we've got a view minutes!"

"Define 'a few.'"

"Look, we'll just look through a couple of doors. Nothing will happen!"

"According to you, we're looking for a murderer. Although, of course, _there is none._"

"And I thought you were here to prove that," Reggie replied tauntingly. He turned without prompt and walked through a set of double-doors at the back of the room. Ester groaned and followed.

When Walter followed his sister, Norman was the last one in the room, and he could have sworn that the air over the swan-carved chair flickered.

The double doors lead to a large living room, with white sheets half-covering silk and plush furniture, and chandeliers hanging from the walls. They moved quickly from it, namely because Ester was still angry and Walter was whining from anxiety about probably missing the bus. From there they moved to a library, which was large and beautiful and spacious. A grand piano stood in the center of the room, poised in front of a large painting of the old Blithe Hollow harbor. Ester actually seemed to calm down while in the room, and Reggie fled from it almost immediately.

Norman fled nearly just as fast; he wasn't going to say it, as Ester seemed to think there was something wrong with him talking about what he saw, but there had been something following them since they were in the foyer.

Their stroll had ended in a storage room just past the parlor.

The parlor had been straight-laced, creams and whites and browns and hardly anything in it except a large, empty fireplace and some sparse furniture, all covered in sheets. The room behind it, in stark contrast, was _bizarre_ and full of _stuff_. It was an explosion of the old and strange the likes of which Norman wouldn't see until he finally called upon the residence of his old Uncle Prenderghast years later, only much more organized. There were type writers and paintings and all different kinds of chandeliers and hat stands. A tiny neon sign the size of a notebook lay on a bookshelf. There were drums, and couches, and tiny ornate wooden boxes the size of tissue dispensers that only had strange metal discs on the top, and a Grecian column standing in a corner that didn't reach the ceiling or match anywhere else in the house. A miniature of the very house they stood in sat innocently on what looked like a spare dining table, some of the windows clear and others a strange, ominous black. There were a couple suits of armor, several old paintings with dates on them (all of which were covered with a dark fabric shade, hiding the occupant from view), and a strange statue of a skinny obsidian dog lying on a golden pedestal.

And there was that thing again, the one that had followed them through the house. Clearer and sharper than ever, but still… barely there. It was some kind of shadow, it had to be.

"We should leave," he'd finally voiced. It was the first thing he'd said to them.

"Why?" Reggie had asked. After a few seconds, though, he seemed to come to the right conclusion. "Is there anyone here?" he asked, grinning with excitement.

"Reggie!" Ester huffed.

"S-something. There's something here," Norman had said. "Please, can we go?"

"_Awesome!"_ Reggie cried. "See, Ester? I was right!"

And then the room went dark.

It wasn't dark because the lights had gone out; the lights had never been on. Something had blocked out the windows, and blocked them so completely they were in total darkness.

Norman remembered a tugging sensation, something pulling him by the sweater his mom had picked for him and tossing him out of the room and into the parlor. He'd hit the floor hard, and then blacked out.

* * *

When he'd woken up, he was alone. The room was different. He had been dropped back into the parlor, he could recognize the room well enough, but the parlor was now fully decorated, mostly with things that had been in the back room he'd been tossed out off—a suit of armor, a candelabrum, the strange miniature house, this time with all windows perfectly clear. The furniture had been uncovered, the floor completely cleaned, and, while the electricity was still not on, a roaring flame had appeared in the fireplace grate.

To an unsettled six-year-old—even an abnormal one—it was too much. Even he could get scared of the paranormal sometimes, especially when he was younger.

Norman had fled the parlor, passing a not-dusty library and a peaceful and sweet-smelling dining room with a table set for a meal, and had just made it to the (still ransacked, but no longer filthy) entrance with the double doors that led to the outside to find them locked. As he'd turned to the window next to him, the doors in front opened, and standing there were two policemen. Distracted by finding the last of the missing children, none of them seemed to notice the inexplicably cleaned house.

Norman had cried all the way home, where he'd been grounded for trespassing inside a ruined house and told off by his father for lying to other children about seeing things and getting them all into trouble. Reggie, Walter, and Ester came into school the next day with bruises and casts and bandages, telling stories of how they had been locked in a pitch black room and attacked by some sort of monster.

For some reason, though, everyone seemed to be most interested in why, while the three others had been put through a horrifying ordeal, Norman had seemed to vanish—unable to be located by the others in the house—only to turn up hours later, completely unharmed and in plain sight of where the others had supposedly been.

It was then that even children his age began to think there was something strange about him.

* * *

_AN: As always, the titles come from idioms—this one is shorthand for "Curiosity Killed the Cat."_

_This doesn't really have anything to do with the chapter, but more Norman's character: _

_Norman in the movie shows not only a preference for being alone—which makes sense, all things considered—but the ability to function surprisingly well during his alone time. The only times we see him or his family interacting willingly (pre-Tercentennial, of course) is when they ask Norman to preform chores (the garbage, for example) or Norman needs them for a ride (like with the play). Heck, he even walks to school himself despite his sister leaving at the same time and probably having her license. And when the curse comes calling, he attempts to counter the whole thing himself—pushing away Neil, who truly wants to help, and then feeling sad when Neil doesn't push harder back, because Norman can't communicate whether he wants help or not. He doesn't, honestly, know how. _

_I can understand this; I did the same thing in middle and high school. If asking for anything is met with disapproval or unwillingness, one becomes so used to withdrawing, to avoiding people and cooking and cleaning and working for oneself, that asking for anything becomes unfamiliar territory—in fact it's miserable—and the people around are so unused to one asking they usually react exactly as feared: with grudging reluctance or complete ignorance. We see this with Norman during the movie a lot: during the play, of course, when his whole family treats his warning like an embarrassment (admittedly somewhat justified, but the fact that he gets told off for having a large problem and is left to deal with it on his own doesn't help). The fact that Neil, his new and only friend, refuses to meet his gaze after his infamous outburst during the play affects him greatly: he turns Neil away when next Neil offers to play with him, because he doesn't have any faith left in Neil actually putting up with him, and Neil himself innocently implies he'd rather do something less difficult than deal with Norman's problems ("My idea is less likely to get us killed"—and, following this, a deadened look from Norman). Norman does ask his sister for help, but only after she's unknowingly thrown herself into his problems face-first, and even then she responds with frustration, asking him something along the lines of 'why couldn't you keep your weirdness to yourself?' And of course, there's the scene where Norman blows up at them in the town hall, because they're all complaining about having to help him even though their town is falling apart and pretty much their entire way of life depends on him finding a way to stop the curse. _

_People constantly in near-isolation can react a couple of different ways to other people in different circumstances: Norman's reaction tells of someone who is used to others letting him down in the end. Unfortunately, this fear of being abandoned in his time of need is pretty much justified, seeing as it appears to happen _a lot._ The true resolution of Norman's problems isn't when he faces Aggie—it's when his sister stands up for him at town hall and rallies the others to do the same, because it reflects that someone is finally willing to stick with him despite the possible consequences, and willing to try to make up for the fact that they let him down. Even afterwards, I can't imagine all's immediately right with the world: the town he's grown up expecting nothing but hatred and mockery from tried to lynch him after all, and that's never given a conclusion—we only see the people in the mob start to blame each other, which I'm assuming by now is Blithe Hollow's go-to for pretty much everything. During the Tercentennial, Norman's abandoned to save the town on his own (multiple times), electrocuted (multiple times), and nearly murdered by the people he usually sees on the streets everyday (if we're counting the instances when they set the Town Hall on fire, even that is 'multiple times!'). The _least_ you'd get from that kind of experience is PTSD. _

_Say what you will about his family life getting better, but that kid needs some major therapy._

_And that's my psychoanalytical-Norman rant. His mind matches an abuse victim disturbingly well._

**Next Time: We return to Agatha and Julia, who are having their lives messed with by a scheming judge and a worried mother, and formally introduce the next section of the Act. **

**Also, we're nearing the point at which I will begin to post Act 2***

***Acts are named for chronological order, not reading order. Act 1 is around Agatha's time, Act 3 is modern times—and Act 2 is a tale in between.**


	13. Stuk 10: Coraline

_This was incredibly hard to write for some reason. It just didn't want to get written, which unfortunately put everything _else_ on pause. The promised two disagreeable women - well, _one's_ here, the other's been moved to the next stuk due to the chapter otherwise not being succinct. _

* * *

Stuk 10: Around the Bush

June 24th, 2013

The collection of her great uncle's notes was a no-go. Apparently, the Observatory was now off-limits for the time being. She truly was beginning to suspect someone was out to stop her.

That morning, after getting dressed, Coraline headed down to the breakfast room where Miss Lovely awaited her with notifications that the Observatory telescope was now being renovated—though the building was routinely cleaned, the telescope was never used and thus hadn't received regular maintenance. It was now in the process of being repaired, and so the building was being emptied of people due to the scale of the job.

As the Observatory was one of the few things her mother hadn't used her Medusa impression on, Coraline wished her mother had come down to breakfast just so she could see her reaction and possibly get more information. As it was, she hadn't seen her mother for two days. Coraline supposed she was having food brought up to her by one of the maids.

It wasn't like her mother to coop herself up—she didn't like dirt or gardening, but she wasn't adverse to the outdoors, and there were plenty of other rooms in the house if she wished for alone time. But she had picked the guest bedroom with the plainest decoration and the least furniture, placed her things in there and huddled up (the room, interestingly enough, was a disused servants' room a floor apart from literally everyone else's in the manor—except for Miss Lovely's, which was across the hall).

As it was one of the rare days Mel and Miss Lovely were _not_ leaving to discuss finances, Coraline had gone up to try to persuade her mother to come out (as well as ask her why _exactly_ her dad couldn't have come here with them, since apparently they had the money), but she seemed insistent that she had '_work_ to do, Coraline—_lots_ of _work_' and the door stayed shut between them.

So, since her mother was sulking and Miss Lovely was off running something or other, Coraline had spirited away a shop vac from the nearest utility closet and dragged it up the stairs to her little attic room—which definitely needed a little cleaning.

She was careful to indiscriminately vacuum the larger room at the top of the stairs, as well as the hallway and the study-like room she had found. If she _wasn't_ supposed to have found this place (yet) and she _didn't _vacuum, they'd notice her footprints, and it would draw attention especially to the study-like room at the end of the hall, where most of her footprints led. At least if she vacuumed, they might conclude that someone had been up there from the lack of dust, but they wouldn't be able to find out who or what they were doing.

After vacuuming the hallway she'd gotten bored, and went downstairs to make an obnoxious amount of noise up and down the hallway her mother was staying in, hoping to provoke her out. When that didn't work, she wandered the rooms around her mother's, exclaiming loudly about stupidly insignificant details she noticed.

Getting bored of that again, Coraline shot upstairs to the office-like room and took pictures of the jars on the shelf, then ran down to the medicine room, hoping to compare and identify some of the strange things in the jars. It didn't work, but at least she now knew they weren't typical medicine jars. She sent the pictures to Wybie to see if he could figure out anything.

Loitering around the rooms near her mother's again, she began to notice how some of them were shaped strangely. The disused servants' sewing room, for instance, had a large closet protruding from the wall—as it was one of the corner rooms, there was no room for intrusive closets—but the inside of the closet was far smaller than the protrusion would suggest. Worse still, some rooms didn't seem to fit with the upper floor's rectangular shape. Though it was a corner room as well, the Birchwood Library had curving sides, with windows even in the curved corners, each wall being equally thin—which didn't make sense, as it appeared to have a 90° sharp corner from the outside.

Coraline was about to search the Sewing Room closet when she heard Miss Lovely calling for her.

"Yes?" she called back.

"It's lunch time; I thought you'd want me to come get you," Miss Lovely appeared in the sewing room's doorway, raising her eyebrows. "Exploring?"

Coraline grinned. "It's a big house, I'm not used to so much unused space. Is mom eating with us?"

Miss Lovely's jaw set, her eyes hardening. "No, I don't think she will."

Coraline nodded as if she accepted this information, walking with Miss Lovely out of the room and down the stairs.

"Have you met my mom before, Miss Lovely?" Coraline asked while walking, trying to sound casual. At the older woman's look, she added, "Before this visit, I mean."

"If you consider the brief meetings between acquaintances as 'having met,' then yes, she and I have met before," Miss Lovely answered, her eyes focused in front of her.

"Acquaintances? So it was a coincidence, you meeting before? Even though you worked for my Nana?"

The woman seemed to bit her lip, then sighed. "Your mother used to live here, when she was very young."

"I thought so," Coraline said to herself in a satisfied tone. Raising her voice for the other to hear, she added: "She seemed too familiar with this place, when we arrived."

Miss Lovely actually scoffed. "Familiar is one way to put it."

They turned from the flight of stairs they had just descended to walk down the grand staircase, Coraline trailing slightly after Miss Lovely—the woman had hit her stride, her pace controlled, perhaps overly so, and Coraline was having trouble keeping up. Running slightly, she spoke up when she finally matched speed with Miss Lovely again.

"But you weren't here when she lived here, were you?"

The woman stopped mid-stride in the hallway off the Entrance Hall, and Coraline almost slid trying to match her movements.

The woman stared at her, deep brown, shimmering, unreadable eyes boring out of her slightly green-shining face. "…no, no I wasn't."

Coraline maintained an innocently inquisitive look. "When did you meet her, then?"

Miss Lovely began to move again, more slowly, her eyes fixed on Coraline as they walked. "Your mother visited a few years ago—before you were born, of course. I had just been hired to take care of duties Mistress Theodosia, in her state, could no longer preform. Unfortunately," Miss Lovely's voice seemed to go flat, "Your mother caused quite the scene. She ruined Mistress Theo's party, crashing through the front doors and screaming to anybody who would listen about her grandmother being a witch. At first, most people thought it was a laugh, but when she didn't stop people began to grow uncomfortable with her presence and left."

Coraline blinked blankly as Miss Lovely held the door to the Great Room open for her to enter. She, honest to goodness, could not imagine her mother _ever_ causing such a scene. Mel Jones wasn't the type to willingly stick out; she was more the type to roll her eyes at Coraline for wanting strangely-colored gloves when everyone else in school wore grey.

Walking over to the tiny alcove that had been set up for their small lunch, Coraline couldn't process exactly how all these strange pieces fit together.

It was bizarre.

* * *

Coraline asked again at lunch if the Observatory finished its maintenance yet, but her answer—as expected—was no. If she didn't get a time estimate before dinner of exactly how _long_ she was going to have to wait to go get those notes, Coraline was just going to sneak out of the house and into the Observatory at night.

For the rest of the day, she amused herself by searching for other strangely-shaped rooms in other parts of the house. The Great Room, for instance, had an area protruding from the wall that was far too long to be the hallway on the other side. The Study (the actual one, not the unofficial one in the attic) had a similarly strange addition. Coraline wasn't even going to get started on the basement—despite what Miss Lovely had said, it looked less like the former cellar of a chapel and more like M.C. Escher's attempting to be subtle with his surrealism.

She wasn't stupid—she knew what strange architecture meant, especially in old houses.

After yet another attempt to get her mother out of her room, Coraline found a door in the supply closet.

She'd been crawling on her hands and knees when she found a crack in the wall by the floor. It was a rather small closet, after all, and no longer used for sewing materials but instead for coats, so it was difficult to stand up and easier to crawl (she'd learned that after knocking three heavy fur coats off their hangers and onto her head). It wasn't a messy, vein-like crack, but instead straight and deliberate.

Thankfully, it appeared to be a normal door—though admittedly it was covered with shelves to blend in with the wall. There were no glowing spiral tunnels, no spectacular mirror worlds, and no spider demons (well, she hoped). Still, she wasn't stupid enough to just head in there without a care in the world. For one, she didn't have a light, and it was _blinding_, and for another, it appeared to just be a long, empty _drop_—and she couldn't see a ladder. She leaned over the edge that was the closet floor, trying to see what was down there, but the bottom was an empty white, with no detail or visible end.

She tried to crawl away from the edge and turn around, but her knees slipped on those blasted fur coats, and down she went.

* * *

_AN: A lot of hints in this chapter, though sadly nothing interesting yet (well, until the end). I really like old houses, and secret passages are pretty much a guarantee within them—if only to prevent the owner from getting assassinated. There are secret passages on every floor of the Louvé except the ground floor—since, after all, there are viable exits all over the ground floor, and a secret passage there could be easily found and used against the owners by a guest. Many of these passages interlock, so if you find one, you could (theoretically) find them all - therefore, putting one so near the guests is too dangerous a mistake to make. _

_Mel seems like kind of an ostrich-headed jerk here, but she has her reasons and truly does care. Coraline's gloves, for instance, are a good example of that._

_*The stuk title, Around the Bush, is shorthand for Beating Around the Bush_, _and is yet another poke at me dragging my feet when it comes to excitement. Then again, the beginning of the _Coraline _had the same kind of thing going on, what with Coraline just wandering around and exploring, so I feel slightly justified. And this _is_ necessary._

**Next Time, an update in Act 1: we return to 1712 Blithe Hollow, after leaving it in the throes of a witch hunt. **


End file.
